I loved the song tonight, How Beautiful the Body of Christ. That’s the way God sees us. Even with our faults and flaws, He thinks we are beautiful. Praise the Lord! I am going to talk tonight about another humanity. This is a revelation that saved my life. It’s a little deep, but I will try to make it as clear as I can, because I believe it will change your life, and help you understand what God is doing in your life.
We don’t understand a lot of things that happen to us - they baffle us. But God has a purpose, and His purpose may not be our purpose? God said, “My ways are not your ways. Neither are my thoughts your thoughts. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts, and my ways above your ways.” Tonight we will get into a little bit of the mystery of the Holy Spirit of God Himself, and how it concerns us. I hope this will help you understand the Holy Spirit’s moving in your life. The title is Another Humanity.
I’m going to propose to you tonight that the message of the New Testament is a transition from one humanity to another. I will try to show you what God is up to. Sometimes there is just one purpose to all the things He does. Look at these scriptures: John 12:23-25, Matthew 10:38-39, Matthew 16:25-27, Mark 8:34-38, Luke 9:23-26, Luke 9:23-26, Luke 17:32-34, II Cor. 5:17, I Cor. 1:18, I Cor. 15:21-22.
First, I have some good news. God’s goal is us. He did everything - all the creation, sent his son for one purpose - humanity - you and I. He created this whole universe for us. He made Adam in his own image. There is only one creature in this whole universe that is made in the image of God. It’s not the Tasmanian Devil - it’s not an ox - it’s not a zebra - it’s not a monkey. My friend, Ray Comfort, has a big picture of a gorilla. It says, "Is This your pappy?” They’re almost as smart as us, right? No way! Only one person, only one creature in this universe bears the image of Almighty God. That creature is man! God’s purpose and goal is man. He put his best together. He said “Let us make man in our own image.” In the Hebrew, it says that he was formed out of the dirt of the ground, out of the mud. The Bible reads like this in the Hebrew, “Like a mother bending over her newborn baby, God leaned over the man and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And man became a living soul. God rested.”
He made man, and then He rested. His purpose was fulfilled. And He put this man in the Garden of Eden and named him Adam. God was so excited. You see, back in eternity pass, there was just God. He had the angels He created to do his bidding, but He could not fellowship with them. There was no one in His image; no one like Him. There was no one to reveal Himself to – until He created man.
God, in His infinite perfection and His infinite glory, is fully aware of who He is and what He is without pride or arrogance. He knows that He is God and that He is perfect. He is infinitely perfect - infinitely beautiful. Everything that you see in nature, the Grand Canyon, all the beautiful things that you see, came from the heart of God. He had that in his heart. He created man because He wanted someone to fellowship with, someone to reveal himself to. God wanted to share His heart. God wanted to show someone what was in Himself. He wanted to show His glory, His power, all of His infinite being to someone. He yearned to fellowship and to share His infinite perfection, His glory and His beauty with someone. So He made man.
And His goal was to fellowship with that man and to spend time with him. David said, “O God, what is man that thou are mindful of him. And the son of man, that thou visitest with him. O remember that we are just dust. Have mercy on us o God.” Almighty God created a man in his own image. He fashioned the first man with His own hands. Did you know that some people believe that the only original creative act He made with His own hands after Genesis 1:1 is Adam? The others were, “Let the waters swarm…the earth bring forth…divide this.” But after Genesis 1:1, the only original creative act was when He formed man with His own hands. Now God doesn’t have hands like us. But He does have hands - spiritual hands. And He personally made man out of the dust of the ground. He didn’t send an angel to do it. He did it Himself. And He breathed His own life into man, the very life of God.
We know that Adam and Eve would have lived forever if they had not disobeyed God and sinned. He told them that the day they sinned they would begin to die that day. He told them they could eat off the tree of life, but not the other tree, because it would bring death. Gods life was in them. Can you imagine that? They lived in a perfect environment. It never rained. There were no criminals or thugs to rob them or beat them up, no violence, and no wild animals – nothing to fear. Just a beautiful garden - a beautiful and perfect environment. The best part was that man got to fellowship with God. God was even considerate of man when He came to fellowship. He came in the cool of the day, when it was about 68 degrees and the sun was beginning to set to fellowship with Adam and Eve. He talked to them. It was wonderful! Man had it perfect! But guess what? He blew it.
This man that God made (that would have lived forever and fellowshipped with God, that had access to the tree of life) fell and became sinful. And because he fell, we all fell with him. The first Adam was a representative man, and the second Adam, Jesus Christ, is also a representative man. The first Adam was a representative man because the whole human race descended from him, and he blew it for all mankind when he fell and sinned. He didn’t just blow it a little bit. He blew it big time! We long for what Adam lost - the perfect environment, the perfect job and perfect weather. We imagine how wonderful it must have been to fellowship and walk with God everyday. But we don’t have that because Adam sinned. Now every one of his descendents is born a sinner and lives in a fallen world that isn’t perfect. God’s goal is humanity, but Adam blew it.
The Bible says we come from the womb speaking lies. Sometimes babies cry when they are not wet and they are not hungry and there is nothing wrong. What was God’s goal after Adam fell? God said, “Okay, that fell through so I am going to make a nation and call it Israel. They will be descendents from Abraham. I, myself, will be their God. I will bless them and defeat their enemies for them. I’ll bring them out into the wilderness to meet with me. I will come and give them manna to eat. I will come, personally, and protect them and keep the sun from shining upon them. I, myself, will stand between them and the destroyer. I’ll stand between them and destruction. I won’t even leave it to an angel. Jehovah God came down from Heaven and stood between the destroyer and the children of Israel themselves when He saw the blood on the doorposts. He delivered them with a mighty hand. And they danced and they shouted.
They were tested time after time after time and they failed every single test. As a nation, they never once got it right. Now there were people among them (Abraham, Joseph, and Daniel) who did please God. There was a remnant that walked with God. But as a nation, they totally missed God. The Old Testament ends in the book of Malachi. The last verse in the book of Malachi is not exactly an exciting closing word. “..lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” The Old Testament ends with man, individually and as a nation, totally failing in every situation. The Children of Israel failed in every single situation God put them. He would send them a deliverer and they would do good for a while, but when that deliverer died, they would immediately go back and worship Baal, Ashteroth and other idols. They took idols out of Egypt. That blows my mind! I think I’d have thrown mine away on the way through the Red Sea. “Well, maybe He is God after all. Look what He did.” But they kept their idols. And when they got into the wilderness they had many, but they ran out of big idols. So, they used their earrings and their gold and made a golden calf. In the shadow of Mount Sinai with the smoke and fire, and Moses up there talking face to face with God - there they were dancing naked around a golden calf saying, “This be our God that brought us out of Egypt.”
Then Moses came down from the mountain and, when he saw what they were doing, he was pretty upset. Why was he upset? They had experienced incredible miracles - the red sea, the ten plagues, the first born…God had miraculously delivered them from their slave masters. They had just crossed the red sea and Moses is up on the mountain – it’s shaking and burning and a trumpet is sounding. God is moving and there they are, worshipping a golden calf, naked, just like the Egyptians. Moses saw the scene and he said, “Aaron, what have you done?” (This is one of the funniest scenes in the Bible.) Aaron said, “Uh, the people made me do it. And also we just put the gold in the fire and the calf fell out.” Moses didn’t buy that for one second. You know what he did? He took that golden calf, ground it into powder, and made them drink it.
He said, “Who’s on the Lord’s side? Come to me.” And the ones that worshipped God, mainly the Levites, came to him. And what did he say to do? Take your sword out and kill your brother. That’s tough. We must have that kind of hatred of sin! I could go through and show you every test and every trial they went through, and every time they completely and utterly failed. They never once did it right. The Bible says that when there was no king, every man did what was right in his own eyes. It wasn’t even God’s will for them to have a king. Samuel said, “Don’t you understand that if you get a king, he’ll make your sons work in his fields, he’ll take your daughters as wives, he’ll treat you like slaves.” And they said, “We don’t care, we want a king like the other nations around us.” And Samuel went to God and said, “God I’m so sorry,” and God said, “What are you sorry for Samuel? They haven’t rejected you; they’ve rejected me as king. They want an earthly king.” So God gave them an earthly king and they were almost beat to death with him. They were godless leaders, except for a few. They led them into Baal worship and into the worship of idols. They caused the enemy to come down on them like locust. It’s all the way through the Old Testament. Malachi ends with the total failure of individual man and the nation of Israel. They completely failed in every way, in every situation, and every test.
Now the New Testament is a completely different message. You know what was put in your heart when you got saved? Jesus. What does the Bible call it? A new man, new birth, new spirit. Your spirit came to life. You were regenerated, reborn, resurrected from the dead. And now you have the Lord Jesus Christ living inside of you. The Bible says, “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” Not you in you is the hope of glory. If we were all right by ourselves, we wouldn’t need Christ. But Christ in you is the hope of glory. It’s not like it was in the Old Testament with an objective belief in an altar and an animal. This is something that begins to take place inside of you. The Bible calls it life, eternal life.
Jesus said “I came that you might have life, and more abundantly.” You’re not supposed to barely make it, barely get by. You’re supposed to have so much life; you are sharing it with everybody else. You got life in you, but here’s what’s exciting to me…it’s not your kind of life, it’s not my kind of life. It’s a different kind of life. The very life of Christ was put inside of you and that life is growing inside of you. The best way I can think of to illustrate it is to say that it is like a woman with a baby in her womb. She has a new life. It’s not just her or her and her husband. It’s different. It’s a new being. But this is even beyond that. Growing in your spirit, in your heart, is the very life of Christ; the very life of God and it is an alien life. It’s a different species – not human. It’s a different kind of life. It does not exist in this world. It exists only in God himself.
When you got saved, life was put in you. The incorruptible seed of the Word of God, Christ himself. Christ in you is the hope of glory. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.” And what I want to tell you tonight is, when you got saved a new life formed. A new species, a new kind of life is growing inside of us that is going to destroy our human life, our natural life, and do away with it 100%. I always thought we were going to get better. That our human life - you and me, who we were born, our nature - was going to get better. And God was going to fix it, and prop this up and prop that up. You know what God said? “No it’s all got to go.” And the whole New Testament is about our old humanity being devastated. Not just in theory, not just doctrinally, but practically. What does that mean? In REAL LIFE, your old humanity is being devastated and destroyed by God Himself. You say, “Well, that doesn’t excite me.” It should, because the very thing that is giving you so much trouble, the very thing that’s bothering you so much, your old humanity, your old mind, your very old soul that’s giving you such fits for living for God and serving God, is being done away with piece by piece.
He said, “That except a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abideth alone.” And you say, “What is God doing in my life?” Let me tell you what He’s doing. He has pronounced a death sentence over this man. In Adam all died. What did you do? You died. We are not from the nation of Israel, but God’s done away with them. They failed in every area, in every way. He is going to go back and deal with them again. But God, in eternity past, had another humanity. I’m not saying another God, but another humanity. He had His ideal humanity. He already had that purpose in His heart. He said He tried it in the Garden of Eden, but they failed. He tried it with the nation of Israel, they failed. But what I’ve really been after all along is the new humanity – the second Adam. This is the new species. This is the new creation. It’s called the Lord Jesus Christ.
For a time I was running from God’s call on my life. I wasn’t doing what He called me to do. Then after a few years I got desperate because I wasn’t hearing from Him any longer. He felt far away. I fasted, prayed, and sought God for several months. And finally, at the end of that time, instead of some spiritual breakthrough, I encountered the greatest spiritual test I have ever had in my life. I was sitting in my chair about 2:00 in the morning when suddenly I experienced the greatest attack of fear I’ve ever experienced in my life. It devastated me and gripped me to the point that I fell on the floor. It felt like Satan, himself, was attacking me.
It was so intense and so real, I couldn’t sleep. I felt that I was fighting for my soul. And the Lord showed me that I was trying to hang onto my life. He said to just let go. Let it go because you can’t hang onto it. I got a new revelation that night - that God wasn’t trying to make me better. He wasn’t trying to help me. He was trying to destroy my old nature. The Bible says the heart is desperately wicked, deceitful above all things, who can know it. We come out of the womb speaking lies. The Bible says we were born in sin and in sin we were conceived. We are shapen in iniquity. I saw that even at our best, we’re full of wickedness.
I want to read you something that I read that night. And it just gave me a ray of hope. One of the old Puritans wrote this in his diary. “I am deeply convinced that my best duties fall short of the perfection of God and have been so mingled with sin, in their performance, that I could be justly condemned for even my best prayer.” You say, “Why would that give you hope?” Because a very Godly man got a revelation that, even at his best, he was under God’s death sentence. Even his best prayer was so mingled with self, was so mingled with sin that God could justly send him to hell for his best prayer. I began to read and study the puritans and Christian history. If you really want to be able to see what God is going to do, go back in history and see what God did with the remnant people of God.
I would lie on the floor and repent after this revelation of the sin of the human heart. One night, while I was lying on the floor, the phone rang. It was my aunt calling from Indiana. She said, “The Lord just told me that you are under an attack of the enemy.” Now I knew that was God, because she had no way of knowing what I was going through. She said, “I’ve got a scripture for you. ‘For Joshua, the High Priest stood at the altar to minister to the Lord. And Satan stood at his right hand to resist him.” Satan accused him. He said, “Look at him, look at his filthy rags.” And the Bible says the Lord said, “Go get a clean robe and get a turban and go put it on him.” Then He said “see I have clothed you with my righteousness.” It brought such peace to me to know that when we stand before God with our filthy rags (all our righteousness is as filthy rags) God has a plan. He wants to completely clothe us with the righteousness of Jesus Christ - our head, our mind, all of our body. Satan stands there to accuse us and to resist us and fight us, but God’s going to come and clothe us.
I believe with all my heart we all have to go through a crisis where we give up on ourselves and let go. Jesus said it six times, if you try to keep your life you will lose it. If you lose your life, for my sake, you will keep it. I realized I wanted to hang onto Randy Jones. I wanted to hang onto me so bad, and I was afraid of what God was going to do.
One of the biggest revelations that God has to show us is our awfulness. You say, “Well, no I don’t believe that.” There was guy named Isaiah that says that in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up and his glory filled the temple and the cherubim flew through the throne room. With two wings, they covered their eyes and with two wings, they covered their feet. And with two wings, they did fly. And they screamed so loud at the top of their voice, “Holy, holy, holy.” You know why they’re screaming holy? Because God is holy. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory. Isaiah didn’t say, “Oh great, I’ve seen a vision, I can go tell everybody. I can write a book about my vision.” He fell on the ground and said, “Woe is me. I am undone.” The Hebrew says “I have been ruined. I have been ruined. I’m a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of a people.” You say that if you see the glory of God, wouldn’t that make you shout and dance? He saw such a vision of God’s holiness that it devastated him. And an angel came and took a coal off the altar. The altar represents the cross. He took the coal off the altar and touched it to his lips. He said, “Your sin has been purged.”
The Bible says, “He brought me out of a horrible pit and brought me up out of the miry clay. In Psalm 51 David got a revelation of his wickedness and sinfulness. He had not only committed adultery with Bethsheba, he also had her husband murdered. And what made it even worse was that Urriah the Hittite was one of David’s mighty men who fought by his side. And to cover his sin, he had him murdered. You know the story about how God came and said, “Through Nathan you have sinned against me.” And in Psalm51 David said, “ Lord, you desire truth in the inward parts. Oh God, take not your HOLY SPIRIT from me. Restore unto me the joy of my salvation. O God, create in me a clean heart. Renew a right spirit within me. God purge me with hyssop. Make me clean O God.”
Our old humanity has to be devastated and go through a transition. We want to know why we have gone through perplexing tests, serious trials, things we didn’t understand, things in our own heart, people being cruel or mean, etc. We say, “I don’t understand why this happened.” I’ll tell you exactly why it happened. God is showing us that under every circumstance, every trial, in every test, in every way, our own humanity has completely failed. We can’t trust ourselves. We can’t depend on ourselves. And He’s taking us through trials and tests to devastate us and destroy our old fallen nature.
God has one goal…to devastate and destroy our whole first humanity. And to make us into the image of this second humanity, this second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. That is God’s goal. That is His plan. The whole message of the New Testament is that He is devastating our old humanity and there’s a transition from one kind of humanity to the other kind of humanity. The other kind is the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the only humanity that is going to be acceptable in God’s sight. The Bible says that when God is done all things are going to be gathered up in Christ. And whatever is not in Christ, will be destroyed. Destroyed - our old humanity. The Bible says in Romans that we died with him, buried with him in baptism. Paul said in Colossians 2:20 that when Jesus was on the cross going through such suffering and agony, Paul was nailed there with him. I hung there with him. My old man, my old humanity, the old me, the one that’s given me such fits, the one that discourages me so much, the one that causes me to do the things I don’t want to do, hung on Calvary’s cross when Jesus hung there. And when Jesus died, you died with him.
We all hung on Calvary’s cross and we died with him. Quit resisting the work of the HOLY SPIRIT. Quit trying to hang onto yourself. Quit trying to make yourself better. Just let go and cry out like Paul cried “I’m crucified with Christ also, nevertheless I am more alive than I ever was because Christ liveth in me and the life that I live, I live by the faith of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” You understand what I am saying. We need to get baptized. A new species is being created in time and space that God Himself will fellowship with for all eternity. We have the chance. The only way to hinder the HOLY SPIRIT is to hang onto yourself. Pride, spiritual pride, and all the works of the flesh, has to go anyway. So why not let it go now.
God dwells with the broken hearted, with the broken and contrite spirit. With those who are lowly, have a lowly spirit, with those who humble themselves under his mighty hand. What is God doing in your life? He is showing you and me that in every way, in every trial, in every circumstance, in every test, we have completely failed. Why would He show us that? So we will stop trusting in ourselves. Jesus said not to do like the Pharisees because they trust in themselves and the ability of themselves to keep the law, and their own ability to please God. Not one of us can please God, but we have someone living inside of us who pleases Him very much. He yearns to please God, wants to please God and died to please God.
The Bible says it like this, Ephesians 4:11-15, “He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do His work and build up the church, the body of Christ, until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ. Then we will no longer be like children, forever changing our minds about what we believe because someone has told us something different or because someone has cleverly lied to us and made the lie sound like the truth. Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.”
God will never stop. He’ll never relent. He’ll never give in. He is going after our old man, our old humanity, until it is all destroyed. And it takes a lifetime. Aren’t you glad He doesn’t do it all at once? But God puts you in a trial and a test to take and destroy that old humanity. You say, “Well, I’ve gone through things that were so puzzling I didn’t understand it. Right now, I am going through the worst trial in my life, and I don’t understand what is going on.” God is putting you through a situation to devastate your old humanity so you can transition into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is practical and real.
And you will eventually come to the full knowledge of the Son of God, unto the measure and the stature of the fullness of Christ, unto a perfect man. And that old humanity will be replaced by the humanity of Jesus Christ. You’ll come to a place, where everything you’ve already learned and known will be absolutely useless. You’ll only have Christ. Let go of yourselves.
Be the first to react on this!
Randy Jones ( - )
Pastors Randy and Nancy Jones have answered God’s call to lead a congregation of believers in the Dallas area - Christ Our Lord Church. Randy has been a minister for over 30 years – including pastoring, evangelizing, inner-city ministry, and teaching at Bible Colleges. Nancy is a missionaries’ daughter, devoted mother and wife, successful business executive, and is wonderfully anointed and gifted to lead and teach ladies.The Lord Jesus began to burden Pastor Randy’s heart concerning preparing His people for His soon return for His Bride. The Lord began to deal with him about greater personal holiness, prayer and consecration. Being led by the Holy Spirit, he began to preach anew, the fundamental truths of the Bible, with a strong End-Times emphasis. Repentance, the importance of the Blood of Jesus, the Cross, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, the fear of God, the Rapture, Biblical holiness, the spirit of prayer, the power of the Word, a burden for lost souls to be saved, and Jesus as the Beloved Son of the Heavenly Father – all took on a new meaning in the light of the nearness of Jesus’ return for His Overcoming Church.