Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen, podcasting from Owensboro, Kentucky, at the Greater Vision Baptist Church, where my wife and I are this week for revival meetings.

Well, tomorrow, April 8th, 2024, there is going to be what they call A Total Solar Eclipse. A few years ago here in Owensboro, you could see the eclipse fully, with the moon coming in front of the sun, forming a ring of sunlight around the perimeter of the moon. This time it won’t be fully total in Owensboro, but not too far from here, there would be a view of that total solar eclipse if it wasn’t cloudy. I know many are hoping that they’ll be able to see it, that it won’t be cloudy. But I was thinking about the total solar eclipse in more of a spiritual realm.

You know, many times, friends, we are channels, potential channels, I should say, of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Colossians 1 tells us about the great potential every one of us has to be a conduit of rivers of living water that come from the Lord Himself, from the Holy Spirit’s ministry through us as we are walking with Him, and other people are touched and blessed by the life of Christ.

My parents went home to heaven a little earlier than most do. I was in my 20s when my mom went to heaven and in my 30s when my dad went to heaven. I often thought about the great impact they had on my life and why it was. What was it about their lives that so impacted me? It was the life of the Lord Jesus in their lives and through their lives. They were channels of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. I was touched by the reality of God in their lives, their humility, their love, their power. Just so many things brought to me the reality that God is in them and working through them. And that’s what it’s really all about. The Bible tells us that we can touch other people not through our own strength, but through the reality of God. God touches people. When Jesus was on this earth, he could not go to a funeral without the funeral ceasing to be a funeral. He was the resurrection and the life. He has come that we might have life and have it more abundantly. So we can not just have eternal life, know we’re going to heaven. We can have an abundant life. And that comes from the Lord Jesus Himself, the spirit of Christ that lives in us. And that reality is a wonderful thing.

If you’ve been saved for any length of time and are around a community of believers, you have been touched by the life of Christ in and through a surrendered or dependent believer who is walking with Jesus. As I was growing up, there is no doubt to me that many of the men at the Marquette MAnor Baptist Church were channels of the life of Christ to me. As a young preacher, there was such a blessing. I think of Dave Pergel; I probably talked about him before on the podcast. I’d come back from school, and he’d give me a big bear hug and say, “Jimmy, I’m praying for you.” Tears were in his eyes. Other men would tell me they were praying for me, and I knew they meant it. There was something real about their interaction with me. I knew they knew God, and I knew they were praying for me. They “lifed” me. If I could take the word life and turn the noun into a verb, that’s a wonderful thing.

But really, the podcast isn’t about that. It’s about the fact that sometimes the Son, if I could say S-O-N, gets eclipsed. What eclipses the Son in our lives is not the moon, it’s the flesh. When that eclipse is going to take place tomorrow, the moon is going to almost completely blot out the sun’s light, leaving just a thin rim of light around the moon. Even though the sun is a much larger body, it will be eclipsed by a much smaller one because the body will come in between and move closer to us. And so it is with the flesh. It sometimes eclipses the life of Christ and the life of a believer. The flesh is a very real part of us. Galatians tells us the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. These are contrary one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would. And the language of that particular verse, the very end, is basically saying because of this great flesh-spirit battle, we don’t always do what we ought to do. In fact, there’s a possibility, even probability, that we won’t do everything we ought to do because of the flesh. But the Bible tells us that doesn’t have to be so, because they’re in Galatians 5 as well. It says, “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lust.” 

You know, the flesh does not have to eclipse the life of the Son. And the flesh is one of those parts of us that we’ll have until we die. Hallelujah, when we die, the flesh is gone. Who we are in Christ, an earlier podcast just a few ago, I talked about this, who we are in Christ will be what we are in heaven. That sinless part of us that is in union with the Holy Spirit. “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin,” and hallelujah, but in the moment here, friends, we do have the flesh. And the flesh can’t be reformed. The flesh can’t be battled in the sense of humanly trying to put it down. No, what you have to do with the flesh is crucify it. You can’t give the flesh an inch or it will take a mile. The Bible in Romans 13:14 says, “Make no provision for the flesh.” In other words, you can’t give the flesh anything without it taking over and winning. And there in Galatians 5, you’ve got to crucify the flesh. Paul said, “I die daily.” Now, crucifying the flesh is something that is not pleasant. None of us are thrilled about death, but that’s the only hope for the Son not to be eclipsed in our lives, for the flesh to be crucified, to be dealt with.

You know, friends, there are many ways that the flesh is crucified. It is always by following Jesus, taking steps of faith, trusting Him to deliver us from those fleshly lusts which war against the soul. And sometimes, I was thinking about an apology. When someone apologizes, that’s tough. And many times, it’s not easy. It’s not something that your flesh wants to do. But in order to apologize, you’ve got to crucify the flesh. Sometimes, going to somebody that you’ve wronged, saying, “You know, I was wrong, I should not have said those words, I should not have gotten frustrated. I was not in victory when I talked to you or when I was having to deal with that problem.” And those kinds of things, you kill the flesh. It’s a good thing.

So apologies are very, very important. Reconciliation is important. The idea there, “First be reconciled to thy neighbor, then come and offer thy gift,” Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount tells us. Where the Bible’s just encouraging us, you know? Just get right with people you know you’ve wronged. If they have aught against you, get it right. 

Brother Bosler preached an outstanding message on reconciliation at the beginning of the calendar year in January at Baptist College of Ministry. You can find that online on either Falls Baptist or Baptist College of Ministry YouTube channel, and I know it’d bless your heart, it was a Sunday night message. But that crucifies the flesh when you apologize and you hear someone out and let them tell you where you were wrong. And without retorting back, you do get right, that which you know, “I didn’t do right on that. I said the wrong thing, had the wrong spirit, whatever.” Boy, that’s a good thing.

Sometimes, you crucify the flesh by just getting rid of things in your life that you know are not helpful or making a decision where you say, “You know, I’m not gonna listen to this music anymore, I’m not gonna watch that television program anymore. I’m not gonna go to this part of YouTube anymore. Or I’m not going to, I’m gonna delete this social media venue. It’s just not helping me.” You know, God knows there are certain things that may not be wrong for everybody. There are certain things that are wrong for everybody, but there are some things that are not necessarily wrong for others, but they might be for you. Because they expose a temptation to you that you’re not successful in seeing victory. Sometimes, you just have to die to it. 

Those that are dealing with issues like pornography often have to say, “In order for victory, everything’s on the table. My son-in-law Ryan, somebody listened to Satisfied that he does, said it so well. If you’re gonna have victory, everything’s on the table. I’m willing to do whatever I need to do, delete whatever I need to delete, give up whatever I need to give up.” What are you doing there? You’re dying, you’re crucifying the flesh. You’re saying, “I don’t wanna give the flesh an inch, not anything, I wanna have victory.” And sometimes, you just, you’ll never get that flesh in a place where it’s not killing you without crucifying it, without saying, “I’m not going there.”

Sometimes, it’s clothing for some people. I remember years ago having a young man on my team burst into the room while I was talking to the other two young men on the team. And with deep emotion, he told us how God had convicted him about some of the things he wore were not for the right reasons. And that night at the campfire service, he threw them in the fire. You know what he was doing? Crucifying the flesh. We do have a campfire on Friday night, and what we’re trying to do on Friday night, we don’t say a lot about it, but we’re encouraging young people. You know, you can crucify the flesh tonight. You’ve got some things you need to throw in the fire, throw them in. Now, I realize today with the downloads, it’s a little different than it was before when it was the hard copy era. And I’ve seen thousands of CDs thrown in the fire that young people felt like this is not helping me. God wants this out of my life and they threw it in the fire. I’ve seen videotapes, I don’t know, it goes back a little bit, thrown in the fire, and books thrown in the fire that were romance novels that young people felt like, in fact, it was a mother and a young lady felt like were not helpful. They needed to get them out of their lives. I remember one young lady taking a sack of clothes, putting it on the fire saying, “I don’t wanna wear this anymore. These are clothes no Christian should wear.” What are they doing? They’re crucifying the flesh.

So sometimes you literally need to get something out of your life. It’d be like a teenager back in the day handing his headphones to his parents saying, “You know what, I’ve been listening to music when the bedroom door clicks and I hear that you’ve gone to bed. I’m listening to music that you wouldn’t want me to listen to and when God wouldn’t want me to listen to. And they give the headphones to their parents. What are they saying? They’re saying, “I’m crucifying the flesh. Now, I can’t secretly listen to it. I can’t handle the secrecy.

I don’t know, young person, what your issue might be, but if there’s some sin issue, secret sin, or something that you keep falling prey to, you crucify the flesh. You say, “I’m done with that. I’m not gonna go there anymore. You’re not gonna watch that. And I need to stay away from that place, or I need to stay away from that website, or that internet place.” Whatever it might be, friends, I encourage you. Would you do what the Lord tells you to do? Crucify the flesh. Don’t let the flesh eclipse the sun.

Because when you do, people don’t get the light that they need. The light’s not us. The light comes from the Son of God, but he often shines through us. You know, the proper view of the moon is more that it’s reflecting the light of the sun, and that’s a better picture of who we ought to be. But more often than not, we’re the eclipse. We’re the moon getting in front of the sun and blocking out the light because we allow the flesh to rule us, and we are kindly minded, according to Romans chapter number eight, and there’s death there, there’s deadness.

We “death” people that we ought to be “lifeing”. And so I just want to encourage you, when you think about the eclipse tomorrow, if you listen to this on Sunday or on Monday, that you’ll think about your own life. Is the sun being eclipsed? Or are you allowing the light of the Lord Jesus to reflect off you, his life to flow in and through you, reflect off you and touch and life others? Because that’s the way God wants it to be. 

Well, the Lord bless you again, and thank the Lord for the degeneration, young people who have surrendered to the will of God and are looking to Jesus, dependent on him to enable them and to let his life live through them.