The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, Lesson 15 start

We are starting Lesson 15. Everybody have Lesson 15? Should have it. It's Chapter 3. I keep referring to the pages. And the pages really are from the PDF format. But the answers that we use and the questions actually come right out of the text. So they're not that hard to find. Once you make a note, you kind of know where you left off. And last week, we finished up with questions six and seven of chapter 14. Six was examples of water supplied to Israel in the wilderness are to teach us what aspect of the spirit.

Talked about the do in Psalm 110.3 and what does it mean. And so now we're going to take a look at something that's kind of interesting, I think, and relevant to most growing believers. And the question is, how does a believer choke the spirit within himself?

One part of the question. The second part of the question is, what can he do about it? So the word choke is kind of a word that Rideout used. And he uses the example. I'll read the example, and then we can talk about it. But as in Isaac's day, the Philistines choked the wells which his father Abraham had dug.

So now the formalism chokes the upspringing of the spirit. and we lose the refreshment of the blessed spirit of God would ever give us. So again, how does a believer choke the spirit within himself? It's a great question. Because I think every believer can tell if he or she has been a believer for a while, they are fairly aware of the fact that You know, they've just grown cold, or they're not as enthusiastic as they were before, or something else has crept in to their thinking and their walk with the Lord that causes the spirit to choke down a little bit in terms they don't realize. How do you do that? How is that done? I think it's by taking your eyes off Christ. Right out says formalism. I think people revert to formalism as a substitute for spirituality. Formalism, that's right.

When they choked the wells, all they did was just fill them up with dirt in Israel. Fill them with some other substance. If we don't fill it with the water of the spirit, then yeah, we're going to fill it with dirt and all the other things of the world. That's why it makes it a good metaphor, because that's really kind of what happens.

I think we as believers are so susceptible to formalism. We really like the pomp and circumstance. We really like, you know, I've, what was I doing? Somewhere in the last few days, I was doing a channel surf like I do. You run into the Christian stations and they all have formal choking going on.

The worst of them are the Catholics, because they give you all these gold-plated things, and then this somber music in the back, and out comes the priest, and he's dressed with all these vestments and all this stuff, and even though I'm not there, I can smell the incense. Formalism, like somehow God is pleased with that? the uh a guy told me one time, he said, if if you take, he took a salt and pepper shaker at a restaurant and put them together and he said, this is the example of you and Christ and then he took a bunch of pieces of paper and he started shoving them down here just a little bit at a time and really what it did is it separated you more and more you know, any kind of thing that took away from this intimacy that's growing with Christ.

Why don't we talk more about intimacy? Shouldn't we talk more about that? And that, isn't it, is it not the spirit's job to reveal Christ to the believer, to teach him not only about who Jesus is, but personal, it's relationship. And so that's why the question here is so important. Formalism is one of the things I'm going to have my eye out for this week when I go to Duluth. I'm looking for somebody who wants to talk about the Lord Jesus and how cool he is.

I don't want to talk about, well, here's what we do in our church. Like I was, you know, and I was looking to this question, the term choke was, you know, the first thing I thought of was somebody like choking, like strangling or something. And that's really not, it's more a restriction. Like a choke on an engine or something, it restricts. And then, you know, I was looking at, I think it's more in keeping with First Thessalonians 519, do not quench the spirit. Yep.

I think, and then on Ephesians 4.30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. I think it's the quenching and the grieving is synonymous with choking. That you're restricting, you're putting something, as you say, in between. But it's the quenching, I think, is the equivalent of choking out or replacing or pushing out or whatever through whatever form, formalism, keeping your eye on something in the world or whatever.

Probably because I have heart disease, that's the metaphor that came into my mind. If you have restricted arteries, what's happening? something's building up in there to restrict the blood flow. What's happening to your body? It ain't working as good as it was before, because it's not getting enough oxygen and the other things that it needs, because it's restricting.

It's like when you kink a hose. That whole kind of view makes a lot of sense. And I don't think we realize when it happens that it is happening. It's kind of like the frog in a pot. I think so. I think it is the frog in the pot, you know. Donna? It seems to me that it's usually what comes between itself, because everything in the world tries to stimulate the self to respond. So the minute you look away from the Lord, something's between you and that fellowship. Everybody hear that? Did you hear that on the, Ralph, did you hear Donatone?

I think he did. Yeah, I did. OK, cool. I kidded Brian. I kidded Brian. He says that he's a baseball nut. So he says on Wednesday, he said, oh boy, he said the Braves won last night. He said, one more win and they clinched the playoffs. I said, that's really spiritual. Thanks, Brian.

Do you think, too, that even though you're a believer and you try to get that intimacy with God, that you could occupy yourself with like in our instance, our family. We're so occupied with that instead of just occupying ourselves with God and accepting his will and having faith that he's in control instead of you trying to take control and fix it. I think that's a great point because family can and will get in the way. because they're near and dear to us. We care about them. And I find that this family we belong to in Christ supersedes everything else. It takes a while to kind of understand that.

And two is, again, back to the point that I made earlier, to realize that what God is up to It's all, maybe that's the way my brain works. I don't know, what are you up to? What are you up to? Why are you doing what you're doing? God is up to creating this environment where we are, the Bible used the term walking in the spirit, fellowshipping with the spirit. So it isn't him, it's Christ because that's his job. And so you find that the person of the Lord Jesus It starts to become important to you. It isn't whether you're sinning or not sinning.

It's like anybody that you love. You don't want to do anything that would put any sort of a shadow on the relationship. You find back to the issue of family. You know, when they do something that puts a shadow on the family's relationship, it's a crisis sometimes. How do you deal with that? Or do you deal with it? Because if you've got the family moving in the direction of walking with the Lord, it's a much cooler thing than whether they're involved in some earthly issue that really has not a whole lot to do with their spirituality. And that's why I think that these methodologies that come along are so attractive to most Christians.

I know it's been 10 years now, but when when spiritual formation showed up, or the prayer of Jabez, or all this kind of, what's the tag? The tag is, do you wanna be more spiritual than you are today? And everybody says, oh yeah, wanna do that. Well, we've got the method. And if you'll come to our class and do our HUB234, you will be more spiritual tomorrow than you are today. Problem is, is that most of the time, those methodologies aren't the issue.

If you take a look at, is this actually going to edify me? And you think, well, it will because whatever they're selling, It's like when I first became a Christian in the 70s, the charismatic movement was really exploding. And the baptism of the spirit was the deal. I was going to make you spiritual. Well, it just sort of gave me a headache, I guess. But it was weird. A couple of times, we were at some events where it really got kind of strange. It felt strange. We didn't go back. Because you could just tell it wasn't of the spirit of God.

Because his job is to reveal Christ, to create this intimacy and this walk between every believer and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And it's like, really, that the second person of the Godhead, who is my Savior, actually wants me to hang out with him?

Yeah, that's what he wants. That's what they want. They want us in fellowship with them. Look what they went through to put that all together. The second person of trinity had to become a man. He had to die for the sins of the world, buried and resurrected, exalted in heaven, a man for all eternity. And then he puts us in him. For what reason? What good is being in Christ? What's it for? Fellowship. That's what it's for. you know, intimacy, and so, yeah.

I've been reading in The Hungry Heart that the Holy Spirit is the one that causes the spiritual growth. That's exactly right. I don't have to do anything to increase, I can't do anything to increase spiritually. Right. I just have to look to Christ, and the Holy Spirit causes the spiritual growth. Yeah. So, all these formulas are just bad, they're just dumb formulas. Well, it's, yeah.

It's like we're from the U.S. government and we're here to help you. I'm sure you are. Mike, also, I think how do we get away from, or other ways we don't choke out the Holy Spirit? Going back on the second half of the question, I looked at Galatians 5.16, but I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. walking, and then the second one in five, 25 and 26, if we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying another. It's the relying on walking with, you know, I just think of, you know, walking with somebody. You're walking with the spirit in this, and that's what keeps you from choking off the spirit.

You know, it's interesting. What the spirit calls us to do is to sell out to him. Well, how can I sell out to him and be a constitutional Republican at the same time? He says, I got rights. No, you don't. Jesus has got them all. I don't know, selling out, I think it's the, we're bond slaves. Yes, we are. You know, we're not free, bond slaves to Christ. We weren't ever designed to be independent free agents, never. So yeah, we haven't sold out, we're actually bond slaves to righteousness, you know, to Christ, which is not a bad place to be. What Rideout wrote, which I really like, was, there's nothing for us but to return to the first love.

To dig again, to open up again the channels for the welling up of the spirit of God. God does not give his spirit by measure. You know what that means? It means it's full on all the time. It's not measured. You get 39.5% because, no, it's full on more so than you can imagine. Like being on one of those rockets when they send them off to space, standing underneath that thing, it's full on. And God does not give his spirit by measure.

And if we are straightened, it is in ourselves. What's straightened mean? That's a brethren word. If we are exercised, maybe it would be a simile. We are exercised within ourselves. The great thing to come to the understanding is that no matter how stumbling our walk is, the spirit of God knows all about that. And he meets us where we are. And his focus and desire is to get us to walk and rest in Christ and to trust him, no matter what the circumstances are, just to trust him. You know?

And you come to find out, well, that's a pretty good place to be, where I trust him to do what he's going to do, including, like Jim was saying, I can't cause myself to grow one inch spiritually. But that's his job. My job is to trust him and to have faith in what he's doing. It's a hard thing sometimes, but that's really what it's just too easy. don't you want me to do more than that? No. Just trust me. Okay. Uh question two.

Review the four features of the host Holy Spirits in dwelling. So, we'll we'll take a look at it. First, is the permanency of it. He shall abide with you forever. even when Courtney's at the football game this afternoon, the spirit will be with him. Absolutely. Are you sure? Absolutely. He better be.

But I mean, you think about that, that the Holy Spirit is a permanent, is permanent within us for eternity. And you know what? You can't do anything to get rid of them. You can't get rid of them. Thank the Lord for that. The second thing is for the enlightenment of it. He shall guide you into all truth. So how does he do that? How does he guide us into all truth? Nobody's been guided into all truth, huh? As we walk in the light, he is in the light. We have fellowship with one another.

OK. The question is, how do you do that? Or maybe a better question is, like the verse that Courtney quoted, walking in the spirit. So what's going on in your mind, and what are you seeing and experiencing when you're walking in the spirit? Huh? You're beholding the Lord. So if you're walking in the spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ is in front of you. And you're taken up with him. And he's the focus of your thought process and not yourself.

When you discover that you found the enemy in the camp and it was you, and you decide that, well, I don't want to be the enemy anymore, I want to walk in the Spirit, and you find out, oh wow, that I'm not, I'm in Christ. And the Spirit's job is to show me who Christ is and to reveal things or enlighten me and guide me into all truth.

Because truth is, as the world sells truth, they sell it based on verifiable facts. Well, that isn't what truth is. Truth is a person. The Lord Jesus said, I am truth. It isn't that I got it all in my briefcase or that I got it all in my head. I am the thing truth. That's who I am. So if you know him, you know truth.

Now it's spelled out for us in his word. that way and and there's so there's no substitute for spending time in god's word but there's a there's a there's a link between objective understanding of god's truth and intimacy with the one who is the truth see that and that's what the spirit creates in a believer because you can be the have all the doctrinal truth, instant recall. If you don't have intimacy with Christ, you're just another computer. Third thing, liberty from the law or the principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the principle of sin and death. So, the features of the Holy Spirit is that He brings with Him the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus said in John 17, what did He say eternal life was? He defined it. What did He say it was? I may know Him and the power of His resurrection. Oh, not that. Oh, that was close though, Mike. It's in John though. John three. John seventeen. Isn't that John seventeen?

That this is this is eternal life that you might know me and know thee and the one who sent me. Yeah. Yeah. First three. That's what eternal life is. So, it's not a commodity in a jar someplace. It's not a uh uh you know, I've I've This depends on where you're going to be. But eternal life is restricted to God himself. And what it is, is knowing him. Isn't that cool?

I mean, it takes away from the, well, let's see, I've got this kind of life, and this kind of life, and this kind of life, and this kind of life, and then this thing called spiritual life or he calls it the new principle. A lot of the Bible's translated as the new law of the spirit of life. That word is principle, not statute. The new principle of life in Christ Jesus. After all of Roman seven, He says, has already made me free from what? The old principle of sin, of sin and death.

See, the world, Courtney doesn't realize this, but when he's gonna watch the Broncos today, boy, this is, you're so good, this is such a good example. He's gonna be watching the principle of death in operation. And he's going to be driving down there on the freeway with all them other principles of death. Right? That's all that is. Everything in the world is the principle of death. Everything. I'm so excited to go to the game now. He's going to give the tickets away. I'll take them. I got next week.

So, I think once we understand that the principle of sin and death is what we were born into an atom and it is the planet we live on and everything in it is the principle of sin and death but the spirit of god has come and occupied us and what he brought with him is the spirit of life in Christ Jesus and that life totally Talk about power, that's really something else. I'll try not to pick on you anymore. I'll do it, it's fine.

So lastly, the last principle that he talks about is the freshness of it. He says, a well of water springing up onto everlasting life. In other words, it's abounding, it's full, it sets us apart, and it's complete, it does its job. And so the spirit of God is designed, has taken upon himself, is the better way to say it, the role of not only do we have eternal life, not only do we abide, it abides forever, and there's a guiding into all truth, but there's a springing up. of this life because we can't, in and of ourselves, contain it.

It's got to come out. Got to come out. So when you find yourself in a situation where you're hoping a spring of life is going to come out, well, first of all, you already have it. And two, you have the Holy Spirit. It's his job to show it. So just, again, you're back to trusting him. You're not back to performance. You're back to trusting him. So those are the four things. the features of the indwelling spirit. So just think about those four things. When the spirit of God came to indwell me in you, that's what he brought. That's who he is.

So, question number three, what does the word communion mean? Participating is good. It's common union. Common union? That's almost defining a word by the word. Yeah, well. Give me another word for communion. It's a great word. Everybody knows it. Fellowship. Yeah, it's fellowship. Fellowship. We just got back from a vacation with the Brian White family. We had seven days of communion. Was that in Florida last week? Yeah. Seven days of communion. Except when Brian was cheering for the Braves.

But you see, the thing about being together with believers is fellowship. which right out uses this word communion. We share the same life. We have the same spirit who's doing the same thing in each one of us all the time. We're growing in the knowledge and grace of the lord Jesus.

Stoney one day, I was reading, I think it was him. One of those articles in his book or one of his books, he said, you know, we believers get together and we talk about the toughness of life and trials that we're going through and all this other stuff. He said, when's the last time you met with another believer and you just spent that time talking about the wonders of the Lord Jesus? How cool is that? You know, and that just is a spontaneous thing. We do that around here all the time.

We're talking in the hallways, and we're going to have fellowship meal today, and we talk about the wonders of the Lord Jesus. That's what we do. And that's because of the Spirit of God. He's in us. I meet a lot of people, Ubering. you know, there's a commonality when there's a believer, you know, we just got so much in common. We I can chat with them all day, you know. Yeah.

Hang out and that's the other thing that that communion means. It means sharing and participating right out says, thus, we have fellowship or communion of god's son of his body and blood of his Here, evidently, the thought is sharing in the benefits or in the experiences or in the companionship. Communion means sharing and participating. So one other aspect of this, as wonderful as it is, I think you have to realize that because we're believers, because we have eternal life, and we are encamped in the enemy's territory, I read this morning, and I was talking to Miles about it before, that a Polish pastor in Canada spent the summer in the United States going around, you know, talking about. So he flew back into Canada this week, and guess what was waiting for him? The police to arrest him, take all his belongings and his computer, and go through them all, and charge him with two charges.

So that's the world we live in. That's not the world we're from, but that's the world we live in. And for us to think that trials and suffering are somehow not part of the Christian life is to not really know what's really going on. Trials and suffering are part of it.

And you know what? Spirit of God is in that with us, understands it. And the other thing about that is that God is of such a character, and he's so powerful that he can take every trial that we've had, and every trial that we're in, and he uses it to bless us. Isn't that cool? He never does anything just because he doesn't have anything better to do. Sometimes I pick on Courtney because I've got nothing better to do.

Yeah, it's the principles. suffering. Yeah. It's it's important to understand that because of where we are, we're on the earth where the principle of sin and death is the operating principle. That's where we're, that's where we live. We have a body that's dying. It's full of sin.

We have opposition to say the least and yet on the other side, we have the holy spirit and fellowship And it's no wonder that they would love to snuff us out, get rid of us. But they've been trying to do that for 2,000 years. They haven't been all that successful with it.

I think, would we be the same as Peter? I think I brought it up last week. In prison, would we be singing hymns and rejoicing in the fact that our trial is based on our faith? Would we do that today? that it was today yeah you know and i think that it may be coming it's it's it sounds like it's happening in in uh... canada that looks like australia is going to look great cranky cranky so you know you know it's not too far from us would we do you think that's right would we be the same would be you know and and uh... you know the other one that i was quoted as you know james consider it all joy my brother when you have various trials testing of your faith you know courtney of the if there's one thing the lord has taught us in the last two or three years was that you cannot depend on human government for solace.

It isn't there. You have to depend on him. How many of how many Christians in the United States said, well, this is a Christian country and god isn't going to allow us to oh really live two more years and see how it goes. Yeah. Look at the COVID. Sure. Everybody's. Oh, that's right. We were You know? Look at the way that the mindset of the country is going. Has God allowed that to happen? Absolutely. It's their world. But from a believer's standpoint, so many believers, I think, have begun to figure out that, wait a minute. The world, because of our praying heart and doing all this wonderful Christian stuff, we don't get a pass from God. No way. You don't think that the anti-Christian police aren't going to come marching down your street someday. You are dreaming.

I was talking to a guy I work with in one of the districts. He's a believer. We got to talk about stuff, about politics a little bit. He said who he votes for is whoever's going to take down the United States first because that means the Lord's coming faster. That's kind of the way I look at politics. We're strong, great, but if we get taken down, because we're not in the end times, so that means the Lord's coming back sooner. I vote for the guy who's going to take us down so we can get there quicker.

Have you noticed that the conversation within Christians has spent a lot more time talking about the end times? I don't mean the end times in terms of just the rapture. and and you know maybe the lord's coming soon because things look like maybe and you know yeah that conversation that conversation i'm having all the time with people with christians all the time with a warning attached to it don't let that supersede your intimacy with christ exactly you know because that's the subtle bump Oh, I've got to really pay attention to what all these signs are at the end of the number.

Wait a minute. How about right now, today, walking with the Lord? How about that? By the way, that's a question I've got for the guy up in Duluth. Because the whole focus of this is the teaching is going to be revelation in the end times. It shows where the focus of Christianity is going. Well, people want to know what's going to happen. How about right now with the Lord Jesus, right now? That's what's important. Oh, I'm over. So, we'll pick up with question five next week. And, oh yeah, question four, sorry. It's okay if we skip forward. All right, let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. How we thank you that we can take a look at the principles and how you operate within each one of us as believers and in communion with you and your son and the Father and the Holy Spirit. We're so thankful for that, that we might continue to grow in that understanding. and in the fellowship and communion with you. We thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen. Amen. Thanks, everybody.