Thank you, Pastor, again for the opportunity. We have a different message tonight. It's primarily for Christians. If you've not been born again Christian, I'm not talking to you at all, okay? Tonight, this is for God's people, because otherwise you're gonna get really confused. If you think like the world thinks that everybody's automatically a Christian, then you're gonna get really messed up tonight. But this is for God's people who know him as their savior, And I just want us to see where we are, our position in Christ Jesus. The message title is You in Christ and Christ is in You. Now, in order to understand the message, we have to understand this big word here, okay? It's called in. How many of you know what in is? How many don't know what immoral I'm talking about? In, okay? There is a piano in the church. You knew that, right? You are in the church. In the piano is something else, which is? A soundboard, good. There's a soundboard in the piano, okay? When you're ready to go someplace and Shannon says to David, where are the kids? And he says, they're in the car. What does that mean? You don't know whether they're in the car or not, right? They're in the car, okay? We are in the church. God uses this phrase in relationship to Christ being in us. Emmanuel means God with us. God with us is different from God in us. Okay? When Christ first came, Emmanuel, it was God with the people. But after Pentecost, that salvation is Christ in you. Not with you, but in you. Now, at the end, I have a quiz. Okay? And we're all going to answer the questions out loud. But fortunately for you, I have the answers on slide. So you can't miss it. But we're going to answer the questions out loud so that you get the full impact of the message. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Now, there's a really good four-point sermon right here in this one verse. But we're not dealing with that, OK? The Bible says we are in Christ. What does in mean? We are in Christ. The same as the sound board is in the piano, we are in Christ. It's the position we have because we are children of God. It's where we are, we are in Christ. Now, if you just put those two words on your search engine on your computer or on your cell phone, wherever it works, you would get a whole bunch of references of in Christ in the New Testament. And those whole bunch of references is one of the things that they referred to when a person received the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, that you read in those verses and it says that the person is in Christ. That means they have accepted Christ as their Savior, but it is where they are, and that is in Christ Jesus. This is our verse for tonight. To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of his mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you. Okay? Two things here. Now, we're not dealing with you are in Christ so much this evening, although there's going to be a lot of verses there, but we're dealing with the concept Christ is in you. Now, we think of Christ in heaven making intercession for us, and yes, he's there. But the Bible is very clear. There's 133 passages of scripture that deal with this concept, that as children of God, Christ is in us. And I want us to get that. If we don't get anything else tonight, I want us to get the fact that Christ is in you. But what know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? The Bible says your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. Christ is in us, in the person of the Holy Ghost, and he dwells within us. Our body is his church. Now, it's not a church building like this building is a church building, but our body, the Bible very clearly says, is the temple of the Holy Ghost. which is in you. So the Holy Spirit is in you and your body, he considers, as his temple. That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in us. The idea of dwelling in us means the continual dwelling inside of us is the Holy Spirit. The good thing is the laying on of the hands, and the Holy Spirit is given. Now, up until chapter 10 of Acts, whenever a person accepted Christ as their Savior, the apostles went and laid their hands on them, prayed for them, and then they received the Holy Spirit. When Paul was preaching to Cornelius and his household in Acts chapter 10, he's still preaching. He's not stopping to give an invitation. He's preaching the gospel to them. And the Holy Spirit comes upon them. And they obviously are filled with the Holy Spirit. And there were some believers that went with Paul there, and they're like, whoa, this isn't the way it's supposed to happen. We haven't been doing it this way. And when the church in Jerusalem found out, they called Paul, Peter, excuse me, Peter on the carpet, and they said, Peter, what in the world are you doing? You're not allowed to let these people have the Holy Spirit. And he said, God did that. You mean I'm supposed to tell God, wait God, you're not allowed to do that God. But from that point on, as soon as a person receives the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, the person of the Holy Spirit comes to live in them. When you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, the Holy Spirit came to live in you. He is a permanent resident That means no matter what happens, he's still there. No matter where you think he may be, he is still inside of you with your spirit, is the Holy Spirit. Inside of us, we have lungs, we have a tummy, we have a heart, we have our spirit, And as a child of God, you have his spirit the same as you always had your spirit from the day you were born. When you were born again, you receive the Holy Spirit of God and he comes and lives within you. The Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in us. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me. Notice this concept. Jesus is talking to his disciples, and he said, whenever you accept me as your Savior, you dwell in me, and I dwell in him. So now we have us in Christ Jesus dwelling in him, and him dwelling in us. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you, does the Spirit of God dwell in you? You don't have to answer out loud yet. The answer is yes. If you're a child of God, the Holy Spirit of God dwells in you. Some people say, well, I don't have that. Then the Bible says, now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, meaning dwelling in him, Then he doesn't belong to him. He is none of his. So when we receive the Holy Spirit of God, he dwells in us. The people who do not have the Spirit of God in them do not have God. They do not have salvation. They're not children of God. That day, Jesus was talking just before the cross in John chapter 14. At that day you shall know that I am in my Father, Jesus Christ, in the Father, ye in me, and I in you. Now there's a whole bunch of indwellings here, okay? Jesus is in God the Father. We are in Christ, ye and me, And I am in you. Isn't that awesome? I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth with me. That's not what the verse says. I can call on him and from heaven he will answer me, but he's really, really far away. Now that's not what it says either. Christ is alive in me. If you are a child of God, Christ is alive in you, in the person of the Holy Spirit. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I am crucified with Christ is an interesting concept as well. When Jesus was hanging on the tree, guess what? You were hanging with him. That's what it says. I am crucified with Christ. We were in Christ when he was crucified. Christ nailed our sins to the cross. The nails not only held him, but it held us, and it held our sins. That's a whole other message. Notice, I'm not living for myself anymore, because Christ lives in me. So it is Christ living in me that enables me to live the Christian life, to be obedient to God's word, to be sensitive to the leading direction of the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus is talking about being the vine and the branches. Jesus said, I am the vine, that's Jesus is the vine, and he says to us, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him. Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches. The vine bears the branches. When the branches are grafted into the vine, When we receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, we are grafted into Christ. So we are in Christ. And Christ is in us. His life sustains us because His Holy Spirit is within us. And when that happens, we bring forth much fruit. Because without being in the vine, the branches can't produce anything at all. It is when we are in Christ and He is in us, that things happen that are good. 1 Corinthians 8, 6, But to us there is but one God and Father, of whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him, we are in Christ, Christ is in us. For he, that is God, hath made him, Jesus, to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. We are in him and we have his righteousness. You step into heaven and God says, why should I let you in here? You know what the answer is? I stand in the righteousness of Christ. That's why you get in. because no matter what level of righteousness you may obtain, here on earth is not going to be any good except the fact that we are in Christ and in Him we have His righteousness. God sees His righteousness, not ours. That's the position we have in Christ Jesus. And be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, I can't say when I get to heaven, God, I've been really a good guy. I've tried to serve you for all these years. I've been faithful in church, tried to lead people to the Lord Jesus Christ, tried to mature people into faith. No, no, that's not where it is at all. That's my own righteousness. Is it any good? It's no good. The righteousness we have is that which is not of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ. The righteousness which is of God, that's our righteousness. Because Christ dwells within us, we dwell with him, and we have his righteousness all the time. It's not imperfect righteousness. It's not something we have to work at to get it worked up because Jesus' righteousness is imputed to our account because we are in him and you are complete in him. That means there's nothing you can add to that righteousness of Christ. You can't say, well, I have to do a bunch more stuff. I have to reform. I have to do better at such and such. And you may need to do better at such and such. And there may be some things you need to fix. But the Bible says you are complete in Him. Because when He puts us into Himself, when we accept that Christ is our Savior, there's nothing you can add to that. There's nothing I can add to that. It's not an addable thing. We are complete. That means everything's perfectly as good as it could possibly get because we are in him and we have his righteousness. That the name of the Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and ye in him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. When Christ is living in us in the person of the Holy Spirit, and we are in him, the position that he put us in when we receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, then the Lord Jesus Christ is glorified. It can't be any other way. It just automatically happens because of what God did for us. But whoso keepeth his word in him, verily is the love of God perfected, and hereby know we that we are in him. We are in Christ. Christ is in us. Permanent dwelling place. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? He is in us. And he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked. If we realize that Christ is in us and we are in Christ, then our walk ought to change, if it hasn't changed. We're not perfect. None of us are and none of us will be till we step into heaven and God fixes whatever needs to be fixed as far as our walk is concerned. But our walk ought to exemplify our position in Christ and our walk ought to exemplify Christ dwelling within us. We ought to walk that way. Whoso abideth in him, back to the subject of the vine, but in 1 John chapter 3 and verse 6, sinneth not. Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Means habitually sins. It's the practice of their life. They don't care what God thinks. They don't care what the word thinks. Do they care what the Holy Spirit who is dwelling in them thinks? Is another concept. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, abiding in the vine, and he in him, Holy Spirit dwelling in us, and hereby we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us. Christ is in us by his Holy Spirit. It is a gift of God. He is a permanent resident. He's not going to go away, whatever in the world may be happening in your life or in mine. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit. Think the Bible says that the Spirit of God is in us? If Christ is in us, it does. I picked a few out of about 133 verses that say the same thing, okay? So it's not an obscure thing. It's not a hidden message. It's not something that we don't know. We dwell in him. We were put into Christ, that's salvation. And he dwells within us. in the person of the Holy Spirit of God, permanent residence. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. That's what God says. And we have known and believed that the love of God hath toward us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. It's real easy to figure out what the message is, right? Christ in you, the hope of glory. And we know that the Son of God is common and has given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him. We are in Christ. Even His Son, Jesus Christ, this is the true God in eternal life. Two more verses, and we go to the quiz, okay? You ready? Concerning the Holy Spirit, quench not the Spirit, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed in the day of redemption. Now it's quiz time, okay? How many of you like quizzes that already have the answers on the sheet with the question? Micah. We're going to answer the questions out loud, OK? And if you don't answer them out loud, I'm going to say, OK, class, all together, please answer the question, OK? So you can get it. Now, you need to understand before we start the questions, the devil's a liar, OK? And even as a child of God, with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in you and you dwelling in Christ, he's gonna give you a bunch of lies, okay? And you need to understand that when he lies to you, you can answer the question. How about this question? Where is Christ when he seems so far away? Now, I understand when unsaved people ask this question, because they don't know Christ. He does not dwell within them. Okay, they are not in him. Where is Christ, class? Okay, class, we're gonna answer the question all together out loud. Where is Christ when he seems so far away? In me. That's where he is. We've shown you a whole bunch of Bible verses. That's where he is. Now, I'm gonna give you a clue. All the rest of the questions have exactly the same answer. Okay. We're going to cheat, okay, on the test, have them written on our head. I was teaching Bible, Grace Baptist Church, Wilmington, North Carolina, way back in the dark ages, in the 60s and 70s. And I gave them a Bible verse that they had to learn every month and a song that they had to learn every month. And as I was walking through the classroom, I saw this girl looking at her hand, and she smiled really big and closed her hand and went back to writing. And I thought, I'm going to go over and see what she's got. So I went over to visit, and I said, what are you doing? She said, I'm taking the test. I said, I want to know what you've got in your hand. And she said, Mr. Wingrove, it's not what you think. I said, well, how come I think what I think if it's not what I think? And she said, Mr. Wingrove, it's really not what you think. I said, well, just show it to me then. She said, no, I'm not going to do that. I said, yes, you are. She said, no, I'm not. I said, how would you and I like to go see the principal? She said, OK. And she opened her hand, and it had her name and her boyfriend's name in her hand. So it wasn't at all what I thought. Anyways, these answers are all the same, and you don't have to look at what you've got written in your hand to remember it, okay? Because it's going to be on the screen. The devil tells you, God doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about what you're going through. You know what? Devil liar. Class, where is Christ when I seem alone and deserted? In me. He's still in there. He didn't leave. Why do you feel alone and deserted? Because the devil's lying to you. And you need to tell him to get lost. You need to say, Christ is in me. I'm not alone. I'm not deserted. He's in me. Where is Christ when I'm not sure of my salvation? The devil says, you never accepted Christ as your savior. You didn't do everything exactly right. You missed point number 137,000 million. And you're like, oh no. You know where he is? In me. The Bible says the spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Your spirit is inside of you. The Holy Spirit is also inside of you, and His Spirit is talking to your spirit and saying, you're in Christ. It's a sure thing. It's 100% sure. Don't worry about it. The devil says, God's not going to let you get by without that. That's too easy. You messed up the other day. Remember that, when you messed up? God doesn't like you anymore. Where is he? In me. Where is Christ when no one seems to care? No one cares for my soul. Nobody cares what happens to me. I am unloved. God himself doesn't. Whoa, wait a minute. Where is Christ when no one seems to care, class? In me. Loving me. Hearing his love. Not that we love God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sin. No greater love than a man lay down his life for his friends, and that's what Jesus did for us. The devil says nobody loves you. Why don't you go out and commit suicide? No. God loves me, and he has something for me to do. And he dwells within me. Where is Christ when I'm confused and don't know which way to turn? Class? In me. Giving direction. Thou shalt hear a voice behind thee say, and this is the way walk ye therein. The devil says, God's not going to help you out. Pastor's not going to help you out. People in the church are not going to help you out. You're just in trouble. The devil's a liar. When we don't know which way to go, the Holy Spirit is bearing witness with our spirit and bringing verses to our mind and hereby so all men know that you are my disciples, that you love one another. And the Holy Spirit will bring verses into our mind, and he shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I've said unto you, and he gives you direction. He reminds you of that. That's why it's important for us to be in church, so we learn God's words, so when the devil gets us in a mess, we know how to talk to him. Christ in me. Where's Christ when I'm messed up? That's when the devil really gets on our case. He says, you call yourself a Christian and you did that? You couldn't possibly be a Christian. God doesn't love you anymore. He's gonna throw you out of heaven straight into hell. The answer class is in me. Does he abandon us when we mess up? No. Does he say, I'm through with you? You've messed up again? No. He doesn't. He works in us to convict us of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, waiting for repentance. When the devil starts lying to us and saying, because you've messed up, God's done with you. God's abandoned you. The Holy Spirit has left you. Lie. Holy Spirit doesn't leave us, even when we've messed up. He doesn't say, I'm done. I'm out of here. I quit. Where is Christ when I need a comforter? Class? In me. and he shall send you another comforter. It's like a warm blanket on a cold night. The Holy Spirit, where is he? In me. In me. Here's a tough one. You already know the answer though, because you cheated. No, you had it written in your, no. Where is Christ when I have grieved and quenched the Holy Spirit of God? So that's not a good thing to do. You know, sometimes the Holy Spirit who's within us starts talking to us and we tell him, excuse the bad language, we tell him, shut up down there. Leave me alone. I know that's what the word says, but I don't need to hear it right now. But he doesn't be quiet. You know where he is? Glass. Crying. But does he leave us? No. Does he continue to work to bring us to repentance? Yes. Does he say, because you grieved me and quenched me, I'm out of here. I'm done. I've tried with you. He doesn't do that. But he's in there crying. Where is Christ when I'm walking in obedience to his word and his Holy Spirit? You know where he is? In me rejoicing. Isn't that wonderful? He's in you rejoicing. Wow, they got it. Wow, they're listening. Wow, they're walking correctly. And he just having a hallelujah fit down there. Now, we don't have hallelujah fits because we're Baptists. But you can go home and have one secretly by yourself. And pastor will never know. I've had a few of those times for real. I'm sure you have too. Where's Christ when I'm praying? Some people say, I'm praying and praying and praying and it seems like I can't get through and so I have to yell. Guess what? Where's Christ when you're praying? Listening. How loud do you have to speak for him to hear? You don't have to speak at all. Because his spirit is dwelling within you with your spirit. And he knows what you're thinking. And he knows what you're trying to do. He maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. In other words, not only is he listening, but he's interpreting our prayers according to the will of God. Because he's in us. listening, interpreting according to the will of God, pleading our case with God with words that we can't come up with, but He can, because He's in us. Isn't that awesome? You are in Christ. God put you there. You were crucified with Christ, in Christ, when he died on the cross. When you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, the Holy Spirit came to live in you. He is a permanent resident. He is not gonna go away, no matter how bad things get. He is going to be there till the day you step into heaven. He will not leave you nor forsake you, no matter what in the world is happening in your world. He is there for you. No matter what happens. where Christ is, if you are a child of God, is where he's always, always, always going to be. And the answer to the question class, and we're all going to say it out loud, because some of you quit answering the question, OK? But there's no trick answer to the next one, OK? Where is Christ? In me. In me. And as you are a child of God, Christ is in you. Think about it. Pray about it. Look at your book. That's what it says. It's awesome. Shall we pray? And then Mark's going to come and lead us in song. Our Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank that he loved us so much that he died on the cross for us. We thank you that the Bible says we were crucified with Christ. He nailed our sins to the cross, and we're forgiven. We're children of God in Christ Jesus. But we thank Thee that He also gave us His Holy Spirit, and He dwells within us as a permanent residence because our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which we have of God. And we thank Him for that permanent gift. And we thank Thee that He'll never leave us nor forsake us. And we pray that you would help us as the devil tells us lies about how far away God is from us and how little he cares about us and how little he's interested in helping us that it's a lie. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.