Christ in You the Hope of Glory 1987

The mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now made manifest to the saints. To them, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches and glory of this mystery. The mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory, Christ in you.

Paul calls it a mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now made manifest to the saints, revealed. And yet for many of us, it's still a mystery, you know, and it's, and it's something that we really need to get into and see it and enter it and live in it and walk in it. You will live a life of faith.

You will live a kingdom life when you know that you have Christ in you as your hope of glory. Problem with many of us is that we are familiar with Jesus. We know his teachings.

We're believers. We're part of the body, but we have a difficult time knowing that he is living inside us. Have a hard time letting him have control of our inner life, getting the whole house, not just the front hall.

And that's our problem. And so it was. The believers that Jesus spoke these words in Revelation three, a lot of times people think he's talking to somebody outside, he's talking to believers when he says, behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me. And it is to believers, people like we are, that he still said, I'm knocking on the door, I'm speaking to you, if you will open up and let me come in and have control, I will be your life, I will be your strength, I will be your power, I will be your guide, I will speak to you. When we do this, when we open the door and receive him and we keep doing this continuously, it's not a once and done deal, it's the thing we do every day when we begin to live like that and we receive him in, then we begin to experience the meaning of Christ in you, the hope of glory in four specific ways.

Christ in you becomes your vision of glory. Christ in you becomes your foretaste of glory. Christ in you becomes your drive toward glory.

Christ in you becomes making you, makes you a sign of glory to the world beyond you. First of all, Christ in you becomes your vision of glory. First thing that happened to the apostle Paul before he was ever an apostle, he was Saul of Tarsus, when he met Jesus was that he was struck blind.

For three days he was without sight. Then Ananias came, laid hands on him and prayed that the spirit would enter into him, the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Jesus and the proof, the evidence that the spirit had come in was that scales, something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. And so we read in Acts chapter nine.

So Ananias departed and entered the house and laying his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit and immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. Now, when Paul regained his sight, he was able to see all the things he saw before. But now he saw them with a completely new illumination.

He was illumined by a vision of glory, which had now come to dwell in him. Now he saw the road, he saw the destination, he saw the goal, he knew the way, he knew what he had to do. He also now had vision to distinguish and see the things that are absolutely a waste of time.

This road leads nowhere. This promise isn't going to bring me anything but grief. Now he has a discernment in that vision of glory to be able to tell the difference and separate these things from each other.

And so for us, Christ is our vision of glory. He enables us to see the city whose builder and maker is God and the one road and the only road that gets us there and to hold our feet to that road. Christ in you is your foretaste of glory.

But how do we know that there is glory at the end of the road? Only because we have a piece of it in us now, it's not just pie in the sky by and by, but it's a hunk of the pie inside us right now. And we read in Ephesians, a very brief verse here, chapter one, verse 13, in Christ, you also who have heard the word of truth and the gospel of your salvation, have believed in him and were sealed with a promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee, the proof, the free sample, the piece of pie ahead of time. He is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

Now, if I have the spirit of Christ in me, I have heaven in me. Then I have a flame burning inside which no wind in this world can blow out. Now, in our life, things are rough.

They're never the same. They constantly change. It's like storms going on all the time.

But if I have him in here, then I can walk on the water. I can walk on the uncertain in the midst of things that look like I'm going to sink for sure. And I can keep going.

Because I have him. He is my peace in the midst of the storm. He is my vision.

When everything is dark, he is my confidence and he is my power. When there is no other strength coming to me, he is my only help. Christ in you is your drive toward glory.

The one who keeps driving us on, and so we read in Philippians chapter three, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upper call of God in Christ Jesus. He is God when he lives in me.

He is God calling me on. He is God pressing me forward, always driving me on beyond where I am so that all the idols and all the distractions fade. And I become like Paul, a man or a woman obsessed with one thing.

The kingdom of God, the will of God, the glory of God, the truth of God, the city of God, that's everything. And everything else in my life begins to fit into that. And so you say, well, wait a minute, I need money to live.

Sure, you need money to live. We all need money to live. But if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness in the midst of our daily work, whatever it is, we'll have the money.

And so the world is dangerous. All kinds of things have happened to many people in this gathering here. You know, they've been robbed.

They've been mugged. They've been physically abused. All kinds of things have happened to people here.

And yet he promises that if we seek his kingdom and his righteousness, we're not guaranteed that none of these things will ever happen to us. But we will have absolutely we will have angels walking with us. And in that sense, we are invulnerable until our work is done.

Well, what about the people who think I'm really crazy? You know, what am I going to say to them? I'm looking for words to explain somehow what's going on. And the answer is. That he will absolutely give us the words we need when we need them and not to worry about it, just keep on going.

And finally. Christ in you. Makes you a sign of glory to the world.

One day, the world will be filled with a knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. But that's not how it is now. In the meantime, God keeps raising up a people who are a sign of that glory.

Now, you look at Jesus, you see the kingdom of God. You look at his church, his body, crazy as it is, confused and mixed up as it is when you're looking at people who have any integrity, any seriousness about following him. You are looking at the kingdom of God and the glory of God on Earth right now.

And so he says to us as a group and as individuals, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid, nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand. And it gives light to all that are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. I, Jesus said, and that light in you. And the good works that you do are those things which you could never do apart from me, those words that you could never speak apart from me.

I live in you. So let the light shine, let the works come out, let the words flow Christ in you, the hope of glory. If he's there, let him shine out.

And if you're not sure. Then listen again to the words that he speaks to every one of us right now. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice, heeds my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me. And when he comes in. We have vision.

We have heaven. We have power to keep going and we have power to manifest to the world the reality of God. Let's just wait to find him in silence for a couple minutes.