Let us fear God and give Him all praise, glory and honor and pray for His gracious mercy upon us. He has put it into our hearts to believe and He has changed us to conform to the image of His Dear Son and to live life for Him and receive everlasting life.
Knowing that God chose us and then saved us by his grace means there is no room for boasting either here on earth or in heaven.
Because you are here today to pay attention to God’s Word with your hearts, having gotten up early and dressed for the occasion, is proof that God has chosen and called you and having believed, the Holy Spirit of God is in you renewing you this day in His Word so that your faith will be strengthened and your hope deepened.
With our repentance and baptism into our Lords’ death and resurrection as we have believed unto salvation, we are newly born again with a new spiritual life. Though we might be allowed to be tempted to sin and it plagues our lives as the Apostle Peter said. It’s important to remember that we are no longer slaves to a sinful life of living only through the lusts of our eyes, our flesh and puffed up in self-pride as these things do not dominate our lives like those who are perishing.
And, scripture assure us that our Lord sits at the right hand of power ensuring our sins are continually forgiven seeing how He paid for them with His blood.
When we received the promise of our inheritance, here are some scriptures showing us what we can expect to receive:
Galatians 3:14 “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
When we first confessed Jesus Christ and believed in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, God’s “Will” immediately gives us part of our inheritance which is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and He represents a down payment or earnest payment on the rest of our inheritance.
Why is receiving the Holy Spirit so important to receiving the rest of our inheritance?
Romans 8:11 “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
We must have the Holy Spirit in us because He is the One who will raise us from the dead.
But there is much more to having the Holy Spirit in us. He has been given to us so that we can know who God is, understand His Word and know how to follow Him. We are given gifts to serve the Church, the Body of Christ and the “fruits of the Spirit” in our lives so that we might live in peace and harmony with each other and toward the world: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – there is no law against these things!
What makes our inheritance so sure?
We have confidence that God has done all that he promised in the First Testament which was to bless us by sending His only begotten Son in the likeness of sinful flesh but without sin so that he could pay the price for our sins once and for all.
And to give us a sure lively hope, God raised His Son from the dead on the third day after he was laid in the tomb. In His Will, He has assured us that He will do the same for us, having given us His Holy Spirit as a down payment.
Thus, we can have confidence and can be sure that as God raised his fleshly son from the dead with a glorified spiritual body, never to die again, he will raise our fleshly dead bodies by the Holy Spirit in us with a glorified body like his.
Why are we confident (having faith) in these things?
Philippians 1:6 “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:”
This is another way of saying that the Holy Spirit of God will perform good works through us so that He keeps us. If we fall, He helps us back up, if we stumble, He steadies us and when we sin, he convicts of hearts of it so that we will repent.
If we live in the hope of the promise of the final part of our inheritance, then we continue living in a manner pleasing to God.
When we first believed, the Holy Spirit was given to dwell within us as a seal of our future inheritance of receiving an immortal spiritual body and to keep us as Jesus promised, He reveals God’s Word to us and influences us to do the good things becoming of holiness. He renews us spiritually each day so that over time, our actions become more like those of our Lord Jesus Christ: full of kindness, love, charity and mercy, humbly giving our ourselves and giving of our means, loving those that don’t love us and forgiving all trespasses against us. This is what our Lord did as an example for us while He was in the flesh. And if we are His, then we will want to do the same. AMEN