Who You Really Are - Mike Shaw

Welcome to this switch podcast by Celebration Church Latova.

We believe this message will empower and equip you to live a life of breakthrough.

Thanks for joining us.

So the the church in Kaikohi would would love me to say Namahi Mahanna Kyoko Kato.

Warm greetings to you, to Hungatapu, the holy people of God.

And uh it's we're so excited to be here amongst you this afternoon, this evening.

And uh tomorrow Allison's gonna share.

I'm excited about that.

And Sunday night, uh, I get to say a few things too.

So we're excited to be here, and thank you, Jonathan and Natasha, for your hospitality and your warm welcome to us and to the whole church, to our brother and sister from Ashburton.

Yeah, great to see you guys again, too.

And um, so yeah, we're just privileged to be here.

You might notice I've got a little bit of an accent, and um uh that's called Napui English.

Yeah.

The uh Maoris uh from uh Napu, when they go to Australia and they come back to New Zealand, their children, first before they learn Maori, they have to learn Napu English.

Yes, because uh, and so if you hear a bit of an accent, that's because we've been living amongst the Napuhi for all our adult life.

Uh born and raised in a little place called Beachhaven on the North Shore, uh, sometimes referred to as the Otara of the North Shore.

And it was um, and you might think, well, how did we land up in uh in Kai Kuhikuhi, up in the far north?

Well, I was minding my own business at Birkdale College, and uh it was raining, and there was a lunchtime meeting held by some Christians, and a Raratongan man was sharing his testimony about how he was in the Highway 61 and a very violent fellow and all that.

So we thought we'll get out of the rain and we'll go to this meeting in the classroom.

And uh he shared his testimony about turning from violence to Christ and how he was totally transformed uh by the power of Christ.

And at the end of the meeting, he got us.

Oh, I just saw our Matua Papa Joe Tenakwe, yeah, Papa.

Uh yeah, Pai Kia Tuakwe Tenewa.

Uh Papa Joe's a um a co-matua in our in our community and uh a regular attender of our church during the celebration.

I just I heard that you were still in Raratonga.

We're wondering where you were.

Yeah, so yeah.

So uh I hope they don't honor you don't do 501s here.

Did you do 501s?

No, no, no.

But we'll see you when we get back.

But great to see our matwa there.

Um so we got out of the rain and uh he shared the gospel of Jesus Christ to us, and at the end of the meeting, he he asked us to uh put our heads on the desks and he said a prayer, and then he said at the end of the prayer, if you want to give your life to Jesus or become a Christian, just look up at me.

So I looked up and I looked and I looked to my friends.

They all still had their heads down, so I put my head down and then he said, Everybody look up, and if you looked up at me, I want you to stay back and I want to explain to you a few things.

I was a bit confused because I'd been raised a Catholic.

Any Catholics in the house tonight?

Okay, that's a shame.

Yeah, I was raised a Catholic, so I thought I was a Christian, and uh, so I was a little bit confused, but I had sensed, I'd sensed something or somebody drawing me.

And um, but he said, stay behind, and I didn't stay behind.

I took off with my mates, and uh, peer pressure, I guess.

Um, go forward into the next year, uh, my last year at school, and a friend of mine started to witness to me about Jesus Christ.

I won't go into all the details, but uh, she invited me to um a crusade.

I thought, man, this is weird.

You mean like killing people and stuff?

She said, No, because in a crusade, yeah.

No, no, no, no.

So I went to this Christian meeting with mixed motion, mixed uh motives, to be honest.

And um at the end, the the minister there he said, if you don't know where you're going in your life, why don't you give your life to Jesus Christ?

And I felt the same feeling again.

So uh I had that same feeling of being drawn again, and um I thought I don't know where I'm going in my life.

All I know is that this was a Wednesday night, all I know is I'm getting drunk on Friday.

That was honestly my only plan, my only goal.

Was pretty pathetic, really, as a 16-year-old.

So that was my was my only goal to get drunk.

So uh I felt that drawing again, and I and I kind of had a flashback.

I thought, man, I I think I might be rebelling against God because something's drawing me.

So I thought I'm gonna go with this, and that night I said, Jesus, if you're real, come into my life.

I mean, that much faith.

If you're real, and to my surprise, he did.

The next morning I woke up and there was an instant change in my life.

I wasn't the same angry young man.

I'm not saying I was perfect and became the model citizen or anything like that, but something something changed in my in my life that night as Christ came into my life.

The first thing I noticed was I didn't kick the cat.

To all the cat lovers out there, yeah, I didn't love my cat.

It was a Siamese cat which had a horrible.

And we had a little tradition every morning, the cat was like, and I'd go boop and kick it off.

The morning after giving my life to Christ, the cat went wow, and I went and laughed.

And there was no anger to kick it off.

I didn't wake up in a bad word.

And uh that was the beginning of my journey.

I ended up going to the Raratongans church.

Uh, he was pasting a Baptist church, and um and then one day when I'm worshiping the Lord, with the way we our church building was uh Birkenhead Trust, the pub, the lounge, lounge bar, and there was a split level, a mezzanine floor and a bottom floor like this, but you had to walk in sort of like over there and then come down the stairs.

And this beautiful girl walked in.

I'm worshiping the Lord, trying to stay focused on Jesus.

She came walking in like this and down the stairs, and I'm praising the Lord with my eye like that.

It was Allison, and uh one thing led to another.

We became good friends, and um, a brother and a sister in the church, and then one day the same ministry said we need a young couple to go up to Kaikohe to help with the youth work.

We were 18 years old.

This is before Google Maps, we got out the road atlas.

Where says Kaikohe?

Oh, there it is, way up there.

And uh when we got married at 18 years old, we uh we um a few months after getting married, we went up to serve the Lord in Kaikohe, and we've been there ever since.

Other than we came back to Auckland one year for some training with Youthful Christ, but that's how we landed up there, and I want to say that serving the Lord has been a great adventure.

Uh, it's been a tremendous adventure.

So no matter how old you are, how young you are, man.

I want to just encourage you, submit yourself to God, submit your family to God, take the risks, jump in with both feet, you know.

There's stuff like getting into the getting into the Persian Gulf there.

You know, if there's an opportunity, man, grab it.

Immerse yourself in Jesus.

Uh don't hold back, go all the way with him.

So that's how we landed up in Kaiku here, and that's why I talk a bit funny with a funny accent.

Sounding a bit um on the phone, people just assume I'm a Mori.

And uh they're interesting situations, yeah.

Especially if it's a racist Maori on the other side, they start running down parkers.

Hey, I'm a park here.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, anyway.

Allison speaks funny too, but her accent, she's from the islands, she's from Barbados in the um West Indies, near Jamaica.

You know, there's around 1% white people there, and uh, out of the 1%, I got the 1% of the best looking one.

How about that?

The day I proposed to her, I said, Will you marry me?

She said, Yes.

I said, No, I'm serious.

And she said, I'm serious too, yes.

And uh I reckon I should have bought a lot of ticket or a golden kiwi after that.

Right, hit the jackpot.

But I am going to um preach to you today and do some teaching as Pastor Jonathan said from the book of Ephesians.

If you've got your book of Ephesians with you, I haven't preached this message before, so you can help me, all right?

All right, yeah, goodness, yeah.

Because uh and I don't mean I don't mind a little bit of uh talk backing.

If um within limits, like if you agree with something, say amen.

And uh if you don't agree with me, just sit there with uh a look on your face.

Don't go like this though, but just um what I like about the book of Ephesians is I like lots of things about the book of Ephesians.

It's an amazing book, it is.

And we've been studying it um as a church, but this is the first time we've actually um preached this message, and we're only gonna look at a couple of verses, there's so much depth in it.

When when Paul wrote this letter, he would have written it on um papyrus parchment with a um quill, and he wrote, and it would have just been maybe one sheet.

You can actually read the whole letter out loud in less than an hour.

I read the first three chapters out loud the other day, took me about 10 minutes.

And what he would have he wrote it when he was on house arrest in um in Rome on eBail, and uh he sent it across to Turkey where Ephesus is.

It's a you can go there today to Ephesus.

It's amazing.

Anybody been to Ephesus?

Okay, yeah, Alice, yeah, it's a great place, great history there.

It's kind of like the second holy land, really.

That southern Turkey, you've got all those churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Lady Asia.

I've tasted the lukewarm, uh, lukewarm water in um Lady Ocea, and I did spit it out, yeah.

Yeah, it was horrible, but you can actually taste that luke, you know, Church of Lodi Acea.

You know what I'm talking about, eh?

Revelation chapter 3, I think it is.

Revelation 3 · chapter mention

Those churches, that's in that area.

And so Paul would have written this letter and he would have sent it to Ephesus.

Ephesus at that time was a city of 250,000 people.

You can read a bit about it in the book of Acts, chapter 19, but how uh Paul uh got things going there.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

And they would have read the letter all out in one sitting.

Someone would have stood up in the church and just basically read the letter to the church.

Uh, possibly there would have been six or seven home churches, because um at that stage the New Testament church hadn't been building church buildings, they are still meeting in in rich people's houses, big houses.

So maybe six or seven house churches in the city of Ephesus, and it was um uh passed from one church to another, and someone would read it out, and then I guess they would discuss it and mull over it and start to apply it.

The first three chapters of the book of Ephesians, uh Paul um concentrates on who we are in Christ, their position in Christ, which is really good.

And we're gonna we're gonna jump into that in the next couple of days, and then he talks about in the second three chapters from chapter four onwards, their behavior.

And uh I think it's really important that we get a strong sense of our identity in Christ, who we are, who we really are, and that actually changes your behavior.

Um so we get we go from a place of approval and then we begin to work that out in our life and act in a certain way because we're already approved.

See, uh, what religion does is religion sort of starts on the outside and uh tries to concentrate on rules and trying to earn approval and performance-driven and all that kind of stuff.

But relationship with Jesus starts on the inside, and out of that relationship with Jesus and knowing who we really are as sons and daughters of the living God, that changes our behavior.

It's a totally different kind of uh perspective of knowing who you are and then behaving as who you really are, rather than the other way around of trying to be a good Christian, trying to win God's approval, trying to meet some sort of standard, and not working it that way.

That's religion.

That's struggle, that's striving, that's that's works.

And my prayer, my prayer for this weekend, as my my understanding is that part of the theme of this coming together is is uh belonging.

Is that correct?

And my my one of my prayers is that the Holy Spirit will strengthen your identity over the next day or two as a as a son, as a daughter of the living God.

That you would you would get a better appreciation or even a revelation of who you really are in Christ, because that will radically transform your life.

I have seen the evidence, brothers and sisters, that you can take any man at all from any background, whether he be a straight-laced man, religious man, or a good man, or whether he be the most rebellious gangster in the world with all kinds of problems, any man at all, drug addicted, never been on drugs, whatever his background may be, and you take that man and you introduce him to a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, his life will be changed forever.

Totally changed and transformed.

I've seen it, I've seen it in my life, I've seen it in the lives around me.

Recently, I've seen it.

We got a great testimony.

Uh, we had a young man doing some work for us, his name is Peter P.

And um I've seen him the the before and the after.

When he was working for us, he was on drugs, he had alcohol issues, he didn't know Christ, and uh he was a bit unreliable, you know.

You'd be expecting him to turn up at the job.

He was doing uh like uh digger driver and fencer and all kinds of contracting for us, and we liked him because when he was on the job, he was really good.

But sometimes he wouldn't turn up, so you track him down, what's going on?

Oh, bro, I'm having some issues with my family, and I'm really gonna sort my issues out with my family.

I said, No, bro, you do that, you sort things out with you know your family.

And um, he wasn't a believer, but would say to him, Oh, we're praying for you, brother.

We're praying that you that everything works out good for you and the family.

And we've seen him kind of like go go downhill.

He uh he was on a job one time with Mike, Mike Forlong, and he turned up drunk to the job, and he got right up in the face of the client, drunk, you know, and they lost the contract, they lost the job.

That woman said, I'd never want that guy on my property ever again.

He can't even remember it.

And so, you know, he was that kind of guy, and my son knew him too quite well, and he said to me, Oh, you seen Peter P lately?

Oh man, he's out the gate, he's out of control.

Got to the point where he lost his business, he lost his marriage, he lost his kids.

They all took off to Australia with with mom.

He was in debt up to here.

He got so desperate that the only plan he could come up with was to deliberately crash his truck into a tree and try and kill himself.

That didn't work.

So then he he survived that.

Then he tried to say the truck got stolen and tried to claim insurance, but they had him all on CCTV, filling it up at the gas station before he crashed it, and all this kind of so his life was a total, total, total mess.

He'll ended up, you know, going to court and all that sort of stuff.

But in the midst of all that, he cried out to Jesus Christ.

He had heard somewhere along the line about this guy called Jesus, and he he he knelt down and he prayed and he asked the Lord to come into his life, and he was at P.

D doing his PD.

I think he might have taken his Bible to P.

D with him, and one of the um uh PD officers, what do they call them, custodials?

They got talking to him, got talking about church, and uh so he says, Oh, fire, what church do you go to?

And he goes, So she goes, I'll go to the celebration center.

Oh, is that with Mike Shaw?

Yeah, that's with Mike.

Oh, I know him, Mike.

So he wanders into church, and um, and from that day forward, his life has gone continually upwards, transformed, delivered from drugs, delivered from alcohol.

His kids came back from Australia to live with him.

His wife came back, she freaked out a bit, and then she took back, she went back to Sydney, got his business back, got out of debt.

Glory to God, eh?

And he's he's he's a living testimony to the power of God.

About maybe four weeks ago, he says to me, Oh Mike, I'm really concerned about my son.

He's 20, he's in Sydney, you know, he's on drugs, he's taking, you know, smoking pee and all that.

He's he's um you know, he's on the wrong path.

So I said, We'll pray for him, we'll pray for him.

His name is Zion, we'll pray for Zion.

About two weeks ago, we get the news Zion had bought himself a big motorcycle, as you do, and had crashed it, smashed his head and was in a coma.

Allison's gonna tell you the rest of the story tomorrow.

Yeah, but it's an amazing, you know, like man, you you know, he got on the plane, him and he picked up his two girls, they're back to Sydney, and uh God is doing a but yeah, work there.

Allison will let you know the rest of the story.

It's got it gets good.

But at that time it was desperate, you know.

I say all that to say that when Christ comes into your life, he totally transforms you and your identity.

Anyway, I was got a little bit of track off, a little bit off track there, but we're getting into the book of Ephesians here tonight, and uh we're gonna look at the first um first few verses.

You doing all right so far?

Good.

I just got myself a new Bible, so I'm still um finding my way around it a bit.

I'll be gonna be reading to you from um it's called the New Revised Standard.

I quite like the translation.

Here we are.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints are in Ephesus and our faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace to you and peace from our God, from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in the Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.

He destined us for adoption as his children, he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of his will.

That's great A.

A couple of things I wanted to say in in introduction to this is he's writing to the saints in Ephesus.

He wasn't specifically writing to the saints in Rarotonga or in Kaiko.

He was writing to them, but the Holy Spirit has preserved this for us.

We think about their parchment, you can still go to museums and see fragments of this.

This is an actual letter.

Holy Spirit guided Paul in writing it to them, gave them some specific instructions that were for them.

But the Holy Spirit, in his mercy and grace and wisdom, has kept this letter alive for you and I today, so that the Holy Spirit can speak to us tonight and teach us some things.

Paul said to Timothy, who became the pastor, I just see Amelia there too.

Um he said to Timothy, All scripture is breathed by God and is useful for correcting, training, rebuking, and righteousness, training and righteousness, so the man and the woman of God can be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So we praise God.

Although this was written to those people, it's now for us to learn from.

And that's part of this getting the getting in the right context.

And he says, unto the faithful.

So that's us, eh?

Full of faith.

Amen?

Yeah, full of faith.

So there's some things that we can learn from this tonight, over this weekend, and into the future.

Praise the Lord.

Our identity determines our behavior.

That's a powerful truth right there.

If there's one thing that you get tonight, that is that God wants to strengthen your identity as a man of God, as a woman of God, as a son of God, as a daughter of God.

I believe the Holy Spirit wants to do that over this weekend.

Give us a stronger sense of our belonging to Christ, a stronger sense of who we who we really are.

Let's go down to verse 3.

Blessed be the God of our Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

I looked this up in the Phillips translation of the Bible.

It says, Praise be to the God, to God, for giving us through Christ every possible spiritual benefit as citizens of heaven.

That's a good thing, isn't it?

Every possible spiritual benefit.

As a matter of fact, in your Bible, um, if you got a New King James, you'll see that the word places has been uh is an italic, I italized.

Anybody got that?

Which shows, yeah, which shows that that word has been added in.

So a better, the word places, so a better translation is the heavenlies.

In Ephesians 1.20, we read God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand, and we could say in the heavenlies.

I want to talk a bit about the heavenlies tonight.

In Ephesians 2, 6, we've been raised us, he has raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

What I'm bringing out here tonight, I hope to bring out tonight, is there's a theme in the book of Ephesians of heaven and earth joining together, coming together.

Um this uh theme right through the book.

And you and I are part of it.

God has a plan to join heaven and earth together, and we're part of that plan.

Turn to your neighbor, please, and say, we're part of that plan.

What plan is that?

That's um Ephesians 1, 9 and 10.

He has made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to gather us, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on the earth.

What's his plan?

His plan is to gather up all things in heaven and on earth in himself.

We're gonna unpack that a bit tonight.

This coming together of heaven and earth.

Step one of the plan, and that's the first, is the first man, the first man Adam.

You may know from the creation story that when God formed that first man, he scooped up some dirt or some dust, uh, a uh earthly component, if you like.

That was one ingredient.

The other ingredient that he had was his own breath, and he blew into the man the breath of life, to ha, um, to hei modiora, they say on the Marae back at home, the breath of life.

So you had the two ingredients: the earthly, the dirt, the humanity, and the divine, the breath of God coming into that being, a living being.

And um I want to declare here tonight that there's the spark of the divine in every single human being.

There's, I'm not saying the Holy Spirit is in every single human being, but the fingerprints, if you want to put it that way, the divine essence of God, this that um that element of divinity in every human being.

Every human being, there's an element of sacredness about them, of uniqueness about them.

I want to encourage, and I probably don't really need to because we're all followers of Christ, but every chance I get, I want to encourage people to treat each other with dignity and respect.

No matter who they are, no matter what race or culture or background that they're from, because why?

Because they had the mark of God in them, worthy of respect, worthy of dignity.

We have no right to violate anybody, we have no right to abuse anybody.

Uh our attitude should always be um one of respect because there's that element of sacredness in every human being.

I've come to an understanding that even in our humanity, even in our humanity, we're all children of God.

In Acts chapter 17, Paul quoting the uh philosophers, he said, even your own philosophers say that we are God's offspring.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

In Ephesians chapter 3, uh, Paul he's talking about the whole family from whom we derive uh the whole family deriving their name from God.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

So we're all one family.

Is that right?

We're all brothers and sisters in our humanity.

We see so the first man was a combination of divinity and humanity coming together.

But we know what he did.

We know that he rebelled against God, he he went his own way and uh and messed up.

He messed up real bad, and uh something happened there in the genetic makeup, if you like, of that first man, uh the sin nature was spawned, if we want to put it that way, and um and he was driven out of the presence of God.

He uh that relationship with with God the Father was broken.

Um, and that's why, even though the human race has that element of God in us as humans, we see all the problems in the world today because of that sin nature, that rebelliousness that came in through our first ancestor, Adam.

The uh the way that people disrespect each other and and abuse each other and um all that kind of stuff, the problems that we face, that's because we have this genetic disposition towards sin and rebellion.

So we need to be regenerated.

We need to be regenerated, or you could say regenerated.

We need to have something change in our genetics to get back to that original plan of God to bring heaven and earth together, and we need to be born again by the Spirit of God to come back into right relationship with God and let that transformation come to pass.

So the second step in God's plan was to bring the second man, the second Adam.

Two thousand years ago, that man, the Lord Jesus Christ, came to the earth, but the same principle, the human and the divine, born to uh coming together in Hebrews.

The writer of Hebrews uh in chapter 10, verse 5 declares, consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, Sacrifices and offerings you uh you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.

So we know we know these are simple things, but it's good for us to reflect again on them.

We had the the human element, Mary, the young girl who said to the Holy Spirit, let it be to me according to your will.

And then we had the divine aspect, the word of God coming together, and we have this principle once again of something of the earth combining with something from heaven, the Son of God, and Jesus coming, truly man and truly God at the same time.

Heaven and earth combining in the man Jesus Christ, the second man.

This was God's plan, his answer, he wants to bring heaven and earth together.

Did not Jesus teach us to pray, pray, uh let your will be done here on the earth as it is in heaven, that coming back together again as he originally planned.

It's all part of his strategy.

Jesus, God in the human body, the son of God, the son of man.

Uh, the Bible declares him to be the heavenly man.

He had the first man, the man of the dust, the second man, Jesus, the heavenly man.

Um, the first man, because of his muck up, because of his rebellion, a uh he was in the garden and a curse came upon the ground.

You remember that one?

Genesis chapter 3, verse 19.

Genesis 3:19

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

And we know that a curse came on the ground.

But this second man, Jesus, he was also placed in a garden, the garden of Gethsemane.

And we read in there in the gospels that he sweated, and his blood fell, his sweat fell like blood to the whether it was literal blood or like drops of blood, I'm not too sure.

But his, let's say it was blood, because I understand that that can actually happen under extreme stress.

The skin dilates and blood will come out, and every single drop of his blood in the garden of Gethsemane that fell to the ground, that blood began to reverse the curse.

Hallelujah, that's good news, eh?

We had the curse by the sweat on the brow, you're gonna work the ground and in the blood of Jesus in a garden, the garden of Gethsemane, falling on the ground, reversing the curse, putting something in practice into place for us, the benefit for us now.

Praise God.

We had the first Adam, excuse me.

We had the first Adam, he reached out, he had the tree of life, he had the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We could call that the tree of death, and he reached out and he took the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He chose death and he brought death into the world.

And we had the second Adam, he had the tree of death, he reached, he went to the tree of death, he the cross, the cross to make the way open now for all of us to come into life.

Give God some praise for that.

Praise the Lord.

He made up and made a way for us back into the Father's presence, the way back into his presence.

He made a way for us to be born again, to be twice born, born once naturally, and born again by the spirit.

Probably tonight, many of if not all of us are born again by the Spirit of God.

Who's born again by the Spirit of God?

Okay, yeah.

Who's not too sure if they're born again?

A couple of shy ones, yeah.

But I want to let you know that you can be born again, you can receive Christ.

If you've got friends who don't know Jesus, bring them along tomorrow.

Allison will share the gospel, share the gospel again on Sunday night.

But you need to be twice born to come into relationship with God the Father, to appropriate, if you like, or take access of what that second Adam has done for us, the second man.

The RSV translation puts it born from above.

Where we you know we would normally say in John 3, born again.

The RSV says, born from above.

We're talking here about church, we're talking about heaven and earth.

I'll give a tip of that water.

Doing okay?

Help me.

Heaven and earth coming together, heaven and earth coming together in Raratonga, heaven and earth coming together in Kaikohikohe.

And it got the first man, we've got the second man, Jesus, and then what we need to do is receive the second man.

We we your humanity combined with his divinity, heaven and earth coming together inside of you, you taking the presence of God into your workplace, into your school, into your community, on to the morai, on into your business, wherever God may place you.

So that's the third step, because God's plan is for the um is for the new man in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 14 to 15.

Ephesians 2:14–15

I love this precious church, for he is our peace.

In his flesh, he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.

One new humanity.

God's plan is to bring about a new humanity, a new human being, a new race, if you want to put it that way.

In context, Paul was talking about the divide between the Jewish people and the non-Jewish people, and we but we could apply it to any kind of situation.

Maori Pakia, male, female, all that kind of stuff.

But the main point here is the Lord is talking about one new humanity.

That's the plan of God, a totally new breed, a combination of the human and the divine, of earthly and heavenly, of dirt and spirit.

I don't want you to ever despise your human body.

The fact of the matter is you need a body to exist on this earth.

If you don't have a body, you have no right to be here.

If your body breaks, you gotta leave.

So our human body, God has given us that to operate on this earth.

The spirits that don't have bodies, they're called demons, disembodied spirits.

So the the human body is sacred.

God has placed his spirit in the human body when you get born again, and it's it's that combination of heaven and earth coming together.

See, the Garden of Eden, Eden was a microcosm of heaven, was like a miniature heaven, and and Adam was placed in there as the ambassador of the kingdom of God.

Now in Christ, he is doing the same thing in you.

His spirit coming and dwelling inside of you, your body becoming the holy temple of God, you and I becoming the ambassadors of Christ in our neighborhood, representing his kingdom here on the earth, the new humanity, the new breed.

See, I think we have diminished uh, if you like, our um our view of ourself, diminished the power of the cross, diminished the new creation, and we and we've kind of watered it down to a religion, just like other religions, when in fact it's nothing to do with religion, it's to do with a relationship of Almighty God and Him working with us and in us to bring heaven and earth back together.

See, we religion has taught us over the years that the goal is for us to get to heaven, when in fact the reality is that God wants to get heaven onto the earth, he wants to dwell with us, he wants to come and live inside of you.

He wants to combine that that earthy uh aspect of you, your personality, your your um, you know, the your good characteristics and all that kind of stuff, your culture, your your looks, your intelligence, everything like that.

Put it all together, mix his spirit and with them, blow his spirit into you, and you become um uh like uh an ambassador of the of the Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom here on the earth.

So don't despise your body, look after it as much as you can.

I know that's not always easy.

We had uh we had goals to reach a certain weight target before we came to Raratonga.

Uh by the time we got here, I had to remind myself that muscle weighs more than fat, so because the weight stayed the same.

But Christ in you is the hope of glory.

What God is doing, uh, church in Raratongah is He's building a new race.

Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 23 talks about the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

2 Corinthians 5, 17 might have been the first verse I learned when I got born again.

It says, So if everyone is so if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.

Everything old, everything old has passed away.

It's old, the old world.

Look, new things have come into being.

So when you are a new, when you become a Christian, when you give your life to Christ, you're not trying to become a new creation, you're not trying to be a good Christian, you're not trying to be a better person, you are a new creation.

That's a big, big difference.

There's something totally new and transformative that happened inside of you.

You're now a child of God, twice-born child of God, and you're living that out and outworking that, and you're changing and you're developing and you're growing.

That's that's the goal.

To be totally transformed, to become more and more like our big brother Jesus, the firstborn.

Getting ourselves transformed, growing up, maturing.

You're not trying to do something, you are something, somebody.

Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 24 says, Clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

What I find is sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm a new creation.

Anybody else had to remind yourself that?

Because the all the pressures and the temptations of the world, all the dragging down of the world, sometimes we forget who we really are.

And in fact, I would even go further to say the devil's main attack on us is our identity.

He did it to Jesus, didn't he, in the wilderness?

If you truly are the son of God, turn these rocks into bread.

If you truly are the son of God, jump off here and if you truly are the son of God, attacked his identity.

So one of the main battles that you will face as a son of the living God is your identity.

As a daughter of the living God is your identity.

The enemy is trying to undermine that.

So what we have to do from time to time, as often as we need to, is slip on those new clothes, slip on the new identity, put ourselves back into that frame of mind that hey, I'm a child of God.

Hey, I'm a son of God.

Not trying to convince yourself.

This is beyond positive speaking.

This is beyond trying to be the best version of yourself.

This is reality.

You turn to your neighbor, and if it's a male, say you really are a son of God.

If it's a female, say you really are a daughter of God.

That's who that's who you really are, brother from Ashburton.

You really are a son of the living God.

That's the truth, that's the reality.

Because sometimes we get these doubts in our mind, eh?

In our past failures, um, things that people have said about us.

Voices of stuff we say about ourselves.

We get our doubts about who we really are.

Well, we need to repent.

Repent of that.

Those are lies.

Those are actually lies.

Repent of that and come back to the truth.

The truth is, at the end of the day, Mike Shaw is a son of the living God.

Allison Shaw is a daughter of the Most High God.

Each one of us, if you're born again by the Spirit of God, that's who you really are.

And as we walk in that, our life begins to change, continue to transform, to change.

Power of God becomes more even than our life, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, all kinds of all the spiritual blessings, all the benefits of heaven become within our grasp as we walk into that, into the heavenlies.

I didn't even really touch on the heavenlies, but that's okay.

Maybe the Holy Spirit should put that aside for tonight.

When you get up in the morning, you clothe yourself with a new self.

You put that identity on because that's who you truly are.

Consciously slip into that identity as like when you lay out, kind of like when you slip into clothes.

Hopefully, we get in the habit of this, it just becomes our default, our default um setting.

I'm a child of God.

But it could be that many times a day you need to actually kind of remind yourself of that.

That's the renewing of the mind.

The uh New Living Translation puts Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 to 3 in this manner.

Colossians 3:1–3

Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God's right hand.

Think about the things of heaven, not the things of the earth.

For you died in this life, you ready for this?

And your real life is hidden with Christ in God, your real life, who you really are.

Your real life, praise the Lord.

Not your religious beliefs, not your not any of that stuff, but your real life is hidden in Christ with God.

That's what I think being seated in the heavenlies is about.

I've been asking the Lord, what is a seated in the heavenlies?

What does that mean?

What does that really mean to be seated in the heavenlies?

And I think what it is is we've got this combination of heaven and earth inside of us.

Our earthly humanity, our spiritual dynamic of uh Christ inside of us.

We live physically on this earth.

Some of us we wake up with aches and pains in the morning.

Maybe not you guys, but occasionally I wake up feeling stiff and aches, and Allison doesn't.

She kind of just levitates out of bed.

Angels come around and sort of, you know, usher and are into the oh, oh, oh, uh, you know, and that reminds you, right, that you're still of the earth, that you're still human.

We are of this earth, but I want to tell you if you're if you're born again, you have constant access into the presence of God.

Constant access.

This is what I think, Jonathan.

This what Paul means when he says you're seated in the heavenlies, and that every spiritual benefit is available for us in the heavenlies.

It's not some far place on the distant galaxy, but right here we can walk into the heavenlies.

Right here, we can walk into the presence of God and obtain those spiritual benefits at any time we want to, anytime we wish to.

The heavenlies.

Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 19 says we have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain where Jesus has gone before us.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

Through the veil, some translations say.

So we're talking here about the heavenlies.

I'm gonna round this up with some practical kind of application in a moment.

So I want to encourage us with this combination of humanity, and there's a reason for that, and a combination of divinity, and being in the heavenlies is not about sitting in like in a trance-like state.

Um I'm sitting in the heavenlies, you know.

We can it's not about being a mystic, entering into the heavenlies.

It's more about bringing the bringing the presence of God with us in our everyday life.

Bringing that that heavenly um smell, if you want to put it that way.

Paul says to the Corinthians about the speaks about the odor of Christ, the aroma of Christ, the smell of life, the fragrance of Christ, bringing that into every arena that we uh we're in.

The reason why you're still in a human body and you've still got that element of humanity, is because there's everyday human problems in and around your life that you as a man of God are called to to solve, to minister into, bringing heaven's influence into those situations.

That's the reason why our feet are still locked in this world, is because the kingdom of God wants to get into the world and start to sort some stuff out.

And you are the one.

Turn to the person next to you and say, You are the one.

You're the one that's gonna bring the presence of God and bring the solutions of God into that situation.

And uh nine times out of ten, it's not gonna be preaching at them, but bringing bringing the wisdom of God, bringing the love of God, bringing the you know, reconciliation.

I've recently had to sort out some situations back home, Joe, you know, with with non-Christian people, people trying to act like gangsters and situations and uh, you know, chaos.

And I'm thinking, oh man, God give me the grace to sort this out, come into that situation and and bring the wisdom of God and get some reconciliation, get some, but that's that's about this whole new humanity bringing bringing heaven to earth.

Uh, humanity keeps their feet on the ground, solving real life problems in real time, uh, taking heaven into the streets, into business, into politics.

I like I love that you guys get involved in politics over here, and you're influencing some of the stuff that's happening in the political realm and in the business realm.

Down the back there, I see a few businessmen and businesswomen.

You know, that's beautiful.

That's that's the reality of the kingdom of God coming into the earth.

Romans chapter 10.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

I'm gonna round this up, but Romans chapter 10 and verse 68 says, But the righteousness that comes from faith says, Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

But what it does say, but what does it say?

The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the word of faith that we proclaim.

Is this making sense to anybody here?

I mean, if it's not, I apologize.

I enjoyed it, I enjoyed studying it out.

Sometimes you can do that, you can study it all out, and you get all excited about it.

Wow, this is a great revelation.

But I always like to ask myself, so what?

So what?

So we've got so okay.

Your heaven and earth is combining, and we've got the humanity and the divinity coming together inside of us, but big deal.

So what?

How's that gonna help me?

That's a that's a wonderful concept, Mike, that we're blessed with various spiritual blessings in the heaven, all the benefits of heavens and how's that gonna help me tomorrow morning when I walk into a situation at work or at home which is chaotic, you know.

How's that gonna help?

And I said there should always be some practical, uh, in my view, outworking of the word of God.

Otherwise, I just wasted 40 minutes of your time, and uh, and and we don't want to do that, amen.

So I'm gonna give you something to be challenged about, to put the word of God into practice.

I'm not even gonna say, is that okay?

Because I'm just assuming that that's okay, otherwise, you wouldn't have come tonight.

I'm assuming that you are not just hearers of the word, but you're doers of the word.

Anybody a hearer of the word tonight?

What about on this side?

Any hearers of the word?

And doers.

Yeah, and doers.

So what?

Number one, get united with Jesus.

Get united with Jesus.

As I said, I always make the assumption on a night like tonight that most, if not all, of us are born again.

But there's always an opportunity for a person to give their life to Christ, no matter what's the sometimes you get people who have been coming to church for a long time and never actually received Jesus into their life.

Well, you can do that.

You can do that, and I'd love to pray with you to get born again.

But the other thing that's probably more uh relevant for us tonight is um to encourage you to slip into your identity, to put on the new clothes, to put on Christ that you've been running around, you're born again, you're a child of God, but you need to remind yourself tonight of who you really are and to put that new, put those clothes, if you like, back on.

Slip into your into your new identity.

So I either want to pray for you to be born again, genuinely and sincerely, or I want to pray for you to strip off the old identity, the religious stuff, maybe the struggling and the striving, and put on the new identity to actually say, Yeah, I am a child of God, I am a son of the living God.

That is my identity, and uh the Holy Spirit will help us with that.

Get the old clothes off and put the new clothes on.

The second thing I want to uh challenge us in terms of action tonight is um to get united with one another.

United with Christ, number one, number two, united with one another.

Uh, this thing that we're talking about is a team sport.

We do it together as a team.

Um, people who say to me, I'm a Christian, but I don't go to church.

Uh to me that's like saying I play rugby, but I'm not in a but I'm not in a team.

What?

What team do you play for?

And I'm not in a team.

But you play rugby, yeah.

No, you you you're just you're just a dreamer, mate.

Hey, if you're not on a team, you're not playing rugby.

You might be watching rugby, you might like rugby, but you're not actually playing rugby.

I want to challenge you.

Um, you know, might be a few different churches here tonight.

I don't know, might be uh just one church, but get united, get united with the body of Christ.

Last time I was in uh Raratonga two years ago, I got a I had a dream, and in the dream the Lord was showing me some things about Kaikouhe.

And long story short, we went back to Kaikuhe and we met with the other pastors who had already been meeting, and we declared that there's one church in Kaikohe, and we meet in different places.

And we've come to we come together now we as we pray as the elders of the gate.

It's awesome what God is God is doing, uniting our hearts together.

Because this uh heaven and earth thing, Jesus, what Jesus is doing right now is he's building his temple in in uh in Raratonga.

That's you and I, the living stones coming together.

So not only are you a temple of the Holy Spirit, collectively together, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And and you you belong in the house of God.

There's a place for you in the house of God.

You it's essential, essential that you find your place in the body of Christ and you function and you be and you bless and you work together and you build together the temple of the living God so there's a place where God can dwell.

Uh, in every congregation in Raratonga is like uh like the ark, the presence of the Lord.

And as we come into come together, we're bringing in the presence of God into our community, and we're building we're building that that um temple.

So I want you to repent tonight of any individualism.

Um if if um it's good to be an individual, but if we have like two stronger individualism and we don't think we need anybody else, and it's just me and the Lord, repent of that because the body of Christ needs you, and you need the body, and I want to challenge that tonight.

Repent of that.

For me, it's been a journey when I first got saved, James.

I didn't like Christians much.

And the Lord, but the Lord changed my heart.

He spoke to me in out of the book of Galatians, which is do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith.

And I couldn't get past that one, especially those of the household of faith.

I gotta love those spoil brats.

I thought Christians were spoiled brats, especially uh their children and stuff.

They're just poor brats.

You know, I was all out for let's get the let's get these street kids saved, you know?

Let's get these kids saved that don't know God.

But anyway, he changed my heart, and we need so we need to love the body of Christ, repent of our individual individualism, and uh and pour us, uh pour ourselves into the body.

Uh so I'll be praying tonight that the Lord would give you a fresh love for the body of Christ, a fresh love for the church.

Get united with Jesus.

Get united with Jesus the easy part.

He's the head.

The more challenging part often is getting united with his body, the brothers and sisters.

Hallelujah.

The third thing, in terms of some action, uh some outcomes, is um bring the world, bring the community, bring the outsiders if you like, bring them into the unity, into unity with Jesus.

Um we were all in Adam.

And uh what would you call it biologically?

We're all in Adam.

He was our ancestor, and he needed Eve, right?

To reproduce.

That's how we came into the world.

This is deep, James.

We're all in Christ, and Christ needs to bride the church to bring souls into the kingdom.

Does that make sense?

Just like how Adam needed Eve to create, Jesus needs the bride, that's you and I to create.

Jesus needs the church to create and to be in the community, to create, to birth the work of God into our communities.

The church needs to be activated, the church needs to see its role, the church is not the kingdom of God, but as we move out of these four walls into our communities, we bring the kingdom of God, we bring the work of God.

We I would have stayed, in a sense, in Christ if it wasn't for that girl at my school, part of the church, telling me that I needed to give my life to Jesus and inviting me to a meeting.

That was the church, that was the church in my school.

Another kid, a 17-year-old girl, who had the guts to say to me, the captain of the first 15 and then the the the big the toughest park here in Burkdale College, thought I was, um you are Jesus loves you, and you're gonna hell if you don't change your ways and invite me to a Christian meeting.

That was the church out of the four walls of the church into Burkdale College, sharing the gospel, sharing the love of God, and in that sense, birthing me into the kingdom of God.

Does that make sense to anybody here tonight?

So we need to take, we need to, that's the new humanity out there into the community, birthing the word of God.

So, praise the Lord for all that.

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