Mm

... is Romans 12:1 and 2.

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of, the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

Mm

... day by day by His word, power of His Spirit, and it means God is kind of discipling us, growing us as, as His people.

Um, it's, it's not that God, uh, you know, God's word is, um, is, is deep, and you'd expect a word from God to be deep.

If-

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Father God, thanks so much, uh, that you speak to us in the Bible, and we know that there are things in here that we need to listen to.

Please help us to do that today so that we might respond the right way to everything you've done for us in Jesus.

We pray this in His name, amen.

Amen.

Well, we are coming off two weeks of heightened mission where we tried to share the good news of Jesus with lots of people at UNSW.

And you might be here today because you heard about Jesus in the last couple of weeks and you'd like to hear more, and that's fantastic.

We're so glad you're here, and we hope that you, uh, what you hear about Jesus will be as life-changing for you as it has been for us.

Okay.

Um, it's more the severity of Jesus facing God's penalty of death.

And I guess if He is the great Lord of life, the Lord of life facing death is horrendous, uh, for whatever period of time He has to face that.

Um, th- the second part of the question was did He go to hell as, uh, some of the historic creeds suggest? Th- uh, one version of the Apostle's Creed that you might have said in the past is, "He descended into hell."

Mm

... again and again and again, um, for then He would've had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

But as it is, He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

And just as app- as is- just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.

Mm.

So if that's you, please, uh, put your trust in Jesus and receive the Spirit and get His help in your life.

But it also may not mean that.

Um, you might feel like you're struggling to want to obey God when in fact, um, you have been saved by Jesus and you are just struggling with, uh, your sin.

And some- it's interesting, we all feel differently about our sin.

Some of us are good at ignoring it-

Uh, but we've had a question here about because we have this struggle, does this mean that the Spirit is partially limited or is it fully limited? Uh, what's going on there, and how do we think about that?

Mm.

For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Our Father God, we, uh, are really thankful to you that you speak to us in the Bible, and we're really thankful that we can take time out to listen for, uh, while we're here at university.

We want to learn about you, and we want to learn about ourselves and how we should respond to what you've done for us, so please help us, Father, to learn, and please help us to respond the right way to what you've done for us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, if you are looking for good Christian ministry, what are you looking for? What should you look for? If you want ministry that's going to transform your life, what are you particularly looking for? And if you wanted to find this ministry in a good church, are there, are there telltale signs that will give you this kind of great ministry that you need for your life? You know, the telltale signs are probably not the quality of the coffee or of the smoke machine or the lighting rig, and it's definitely not the fashion sense of the worship leader or, even worse, the pastor.

Uh, in the Old Testament, with the law, people couldn't live up to it, and thus they were sentenced to die, as opposed to in the new covenant, uh, we don't need the law 'cause we have Jesus, and we don't need to be good enough because we just need faith in Jesus.

But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven... for it is the throne of God or by the earth for it is his footstool or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king and do not take an oath by your head for you cannot make one hair white or black let what you say be simply yes or no anything more than this comes from evil

Yes, okay, it's interesting, isn't it? It does look like Paul is kind of claiming oath-like, you know, making something like an oath.

And it's really interesting because Jesus, back in the Sermon on the Mount, is saying you shouldn't need to make an oath because you are reliable and trustworthy.

Your yes should mean yes.

You don't have to back it up with all kinds of invocations and oaths and things.

And yet the Apostle Paul doesn't see that doing something like he does in our chapters this week is out of line with that.

And it's another reminder.

I think that's such awesome news that God has granted to us all that pertain to life and godliness and that this is sufficient for helping us escape from the corruption that is in the world through the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith."

Our Father God, thanks so much that, uh, you speak to us in the Bible so that we can know you and know what you've done for us and know how we should respond to it.

Father, we need your help to understand your word, so help us by your Spirit, we pray, and then help us to respond the right way to everything you've done for us in Jesus.

We pray this in his name.

Amen.

Well, have you worked out that you are somewhat unreliable? I hate to break it to you.

I know you're a very nice person, but you are somewhat unreliable.

[murmuring]

A few people have been asking, we see that the day has started, but when's the finish? Is the day of Jesus' return kind of the end of the day? Yeah.

Okay, some interesting questions.

Yep.

So in a sense, you could argue, well, the day begins with judgment and salvation being poured out on Jesus at the cross.

Judgment being poured out at the cross, salvation coming through resurrection, and the day continues through history until Jesus returns when final judgment will be carried out and All resurrection will be complete.

Could you argue that the day continues after that? You might be able to.

But really, I think it's between the two comings of Jesus that are the key times.

And if you read

doing there's a section in chapter 13 around verse 8 that we've had a few questions from there's talk of this two-thirds and one-third one-third that will be put into the fire ollie asks is the imagery of the thirds in chapter 13 Is that perhaps connected with Ezekiel chapter 5? They might seem to have the same idea.

Yes, another really helpful question because it reminds us that the latter prophets are sampling from the earlier prophets, but we only see those samples when we recognise them.

So there's a chance that there's things there that we're not seeing.

When Zechariah wants to make it clear that he's sampling from the earlier prophets, he can make it clear, verbal similarities, the same words, things like that.

But I imagine he's also sampling ideas and even vibes from the early prophets that sometimes we mightn't pick up.

So the better we become at reading the Bible, the better we'll become at seeing the links and seeing that Zechariah is a commentary on the early history books and the earlier prophets.

And then we will start to see that the same ideas are beautifully interwoven by God all the way through, not just the Old Testament, but all the way through the whole Bible.

But what about passages like Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 to 4, where God spoke through his prophets, but in these last days spoke through his son? How do you think about those two ideas together?

The land shall mourn, each family by itself, the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves, the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves, the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves, the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves, and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.

Our Father God, we're really thankful to you that we can take some time out from all the other things we study to come and study the most important thing, what you've spoken to us in the Bible.

Father, please teach us from your word, help us by your spirit to understand this passage so that we can work out the right way to respond to what you've done for us in Jesus.

We pray this in his name.

Amen.

My father's ancestors left Germany in the 1890s to migrate to Australia.

Apparently, they were sick of all the wars in Europe in the 1890s.

Let's pray.

Now Father, we thank you for a great week of learning about your goodness.

We thank you that you've taught us about your goodness through the good times and through the hard times this week.

And we thank you, Father, that you continue to teach us as we turn to your word.

Please help us understand more of your goodness as we learn today from this passage.

And please help us to be able to go home and participate in your goodness by living lives of living sacrifice to you.

A quick book review.

I mentioned Don Carson last night and he was just mentioned in the video as well.

You might like to have a crack at this book from Don Carson.

It's an excellent book about your prayer life.

And it's a great way to grow your prayer life is to model it on the prayers that the Apostle Paul prays in many of the letters of the New Testament.

It's a great book, I highly recommend it, and you get the chance to learn a little bit from one of the great theologians of the last 50 years, so on the bookstore.