The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit Lesson 18 q. 6
Mike Doyle · Dec 19, 2021
Holy Spirit (2021-23), No. 43
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926192523998

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so we had started down through question five. Courtney always tells me I need to tell everybody on the tape where we are. We're in lesson 18, which relates to chapter three in the person and work of the Holy Spirit by Samuel Rideout, sanctification, and we're talking about the walk in the Spirit. We had started into question five, and I think I'm just going to back up and start at the beginning of five.

The question is, in the second to last chapter on page 42, and page 42 is the page that is the PDF form. It's probably page 98 going into 99 in the book. there is a meager glimpse at the wonders of the 8th of Romans. So the question is, list that. What's great about the 8th chapter of Romans is that I think it just lays out pretty clearly for the first time in the part of the Bible that's about Christianity, Book of Romans, it lays out pretty clearly what the Christian life is all about and begins to educate the believer as to what it looks like and how it works. Whereas everything that leads up to that, really the mechanics of how you became a Christian, what God did about sin, the crucifixion of Christ, the offer of free salvation to mankind because of the work on the cross, The results of salvation, chapter 3, saved by grace. 4 and 5, you talk about one of the first benefits of being saved by grace is you have free access to go in any time, sit with the Lord. All of the barriers have been knocked over by the work of Christ.

Then 5.12 starts talking about these two men, One man is Adam, the other man is Christ, and Adam and who he is and what he's all about, and his nature. And the new man, the resurrected Christ, what he's all about, and his nature, and how they contrast. And so, and then the information comes, well, what God really did was he took us out of the first Adam, all of his background and all of his association, and he, through the cross, placed us in Christ. So now our history is Christ and not Adam. Problem is, is that Adam is still, even though I've been separated from him, that's another question I'll ask in a minute, he's still active, but I'm not identified or united to him. He's not my source anymore. He's condemned and I'm not.

Well, how does that work out? And then Romans 7 talks about, well, I'm positioned in Christ, I'm living under grace, but I'm trying to implement the Christian life by following a set of rules, the law. And that's a total failure. And so we find out in Romans 8, 2, that there's a new principle of life, new principle of life in Christ Jesus that has already Already done, set me free from the principle of sin and death. I'm free. So then Romans 8 starts to delineate what that freedom looks like and what's included in that freedom.

The first thing that you find out is that you're led by the Spirit of God. How cool is that? I'm not led by my business. fleshly desires, or my impulses, or the needs of my body, or my sin nature anymore, I'm actually led by the Son of God, or by the Spirit of God. And it doesn't mean that when you see these verses, it doesn't mean that you have to initiate that. All sons are led by the Spirit of God. If you're a son, you're being led by him. Now, it may not appear that way, but he's doing the leading, right? And then the second really cool part is that you have the witness of the Holy Spirit.

That's when I'm sitting in a booth in a restaurant with my buddy Mike, that's what I'm praying about. Give him an undeniable witness that he cannot push it aside. He's going to have to face it. That Christ died for his sins and is buried and resurrected, and that if he believes that... I said to him, I said, you know, the hardest thing for a Catholic to believe, you know what it is? It's the fact that once you believe in Christ, it's over. You're saved. I said, the best way to describe that is that if you believe in Christ and you don't make it to heaven, it's God's fault, not yours.

He looked at me like I was crazy. I mean, to blame anything on God, you just don't do that. But he guaranteed it. He guarantees it. And that's what the spirit witness is about. He's the totality. of the work of the Lord Jesus. There's nothing left to do for you in terms of achieving standing and righteousness before a holy God. Nothing.

So, the next one is that I actually have the privilege that I can pray in the Spirit. What does that mean? It means I can make all those funny noises? What does pray in the Spirit mean? We don't know how to pray as we should. What's the verse? Read the verse. I think it's 26. Coordinator, you need to chime in right here. Sorry, it blanked out for a minute. What was that? You blanked out. This is your cue to talk. You're the one that really has a good understanding of Romans 8, 26, and 7. Yeah, about the intercessory of the Holy Spirit. Yeah.

And that, again, the God, God is the one who searches the heart. God, the Father, who searches the heart. But then he searches the mind of the Holy Spirit. Right. And that intercedes for our prayers. He's the one who knows what we need. And it will be in accordance with the Father's will, which is really cool. Yeah. Isn't that interesting that the sovereign God of the universe gives us His Spirit and places us in Christ, and now He's going to teach us to accurately talk to Him, pray to Him, from His will. And His will has nothing to do with if, or maybe, or anything like that.

It's all blessing. It's all blessing. So, imagine if Jim had the privilege of searching my heart, and he finds Christ there. Oh my goodness. How cool is that? He doesn't find good old Mike there, he finds Christ there. Then, from that, building upon that, he says, oh by the way, God works all things together for good.

Now, you want to talk about a leap of faith? How about the all things? How many times in your Christian life have you come up against a circumstance and you really thought in the back of your mind, you didn't want to say it out loud because maybe the Spirit would hear you, but this couldn't be one of the all things. This just couldn't be because it's either awful or painful, or embarrassing, or whatever it is, it couldn't be one of the all things.

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It's always, always one of the all things. Everything, even if it's sin. He works sin for your good. That doesn't mean you want to hang around there very long, but that's what he does. There's nothing that goes on in a believer's life that is outside the purview of the all things.

You know, it's a kind of a personality I have. You know, people call me and get going on some issue in their life, and I let them go and let them go, and finally I get tired of listening to them, to be honest. So I say to them, well this must have been one of the all things that didn't get included in the all things, right? The Lord must have missed this one, you know. You're the only person I know.

It's important to know and understand that all things work together. Everything. One of the other cool things that happens is that, what happens at the end of the day for all things? All things work together for good to those who love Him, which we do.

And you know, you don't have to demonstrate to God you love Him. Why? Because the Spirit of God is in your heart searching what you find. Or the Father's in your heart searching what you find. He finds the Holy Spirit. Is the Holy Spirit a lover? Yes, He is. So we love God, okay? And now he says, if you are one of those lovers of God, right?

There's a predestination, purpose, that's taking place in your life. What is it? Being conformed. Conformed to what? To the image of the Son of God. So you have this life positioned in Christ, and by His life I mean you have all of Him, but you may not manifest all of Him. So you have the third person of the Trinity at work night and day, but then there is no day and night, to do one thing, to conform you to Christ.

Why that? Why doesn't it say, well, he works all things together to make you a really spiffy looking Christian? Or a really cool law abider? Or, I don't know. Why the image of Christ? Why him? Question too hard? That's the only thing that matters. Jim says it's the only thing that matters. To whom? to God. There you go.

Even when the Lord Jesus was here on the earth, three times the Father spoke out. What did he say? For people to hear, this is my, that's right, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Oh, well, I guess going forward, the goal would be to have the Father say that about you and me. This is my beloved sons and who I'm well pleased. How's he gonna be able to do that honestly? By conforming us to Christ, who is a beloved son, who is a well-pleasing one. How cool is that?

Now think about this plan that God has put into place for us as his sons, and we are adult sons, to be finally in a position where the Father can look at us and say, I'm well-pleased with you. Oh my goodness. I mean, you're not well-pleased with yourself, most of the time. You know? Or you're not well-pleasing to a bunch of people around you.

But the Father is, because you're in Christ. And the Spirit of God is working, I'll put it another way, the Spirit of God has ordained, which means, There's no possibility it won't happen to conform us to the very image of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's not the image of the Messiah walking around Palestine. It's the image of the resurrected, glorified, seated man in the heaven. That's the image.

Cool, huh? Yeah. The difficulty involved in that is The conforming process takes away things that we like, you know, things that we're attracted to, you know, the things of the world, the things of the flesh. And that's a painful process. Very. It's very painful. But it's a needful process. You know, we don't like it at first, but eventually we will.

I had a friend early on in my Christian life, and he always had a really practical way of explaining things. He said, here's what the Holy Spirit does. You have this idol out in front of you from the flesh that you really cherish. He sneaks up behind you, over the top of your head, and takes a big mallet, and he goes like that, and he breaks it into a million pieces.

And you spend the rest of the day trying to put it all back together again. Let it go did it on purpose because it's going to replace that Christ himself Really good way to look at it Yeah, Mike Mike Mike also, I think you know, that's what Jim's talking about and also you know what you what we're gonna get to at the end of Romans, which is we can't be in hate to jump ahead, but You can't be separated from His love.

So when you go back to those things about all things that includes trials or allowing you to sin, the overriding thing, it's never done out of a malicious attitude towards us. It's always out of a loving attitude. that we can't be separated from it. So even in the trials, he loves us. And if we see through that, it's always for our good to be conformed to the image. But in the midst of it, it's awfully hard a lot of times. But the comfort is knowing that he always loves us, eternally, forever. And that whatever trial we're going through, it's not out of he's carrying a big stick to thump us.

Yeah, I agree. Rite Out says, yay, we can look back into past eternity and link our predestined confirmation to the image of His Son with its actual accomplishment and glory yet to come. So as the process is happening here, you know, once we are face to face with the Lord Jesus, the Word of God says we'll be just like Him. How cool is that? Cool. So, Courtney brought it up.

Are you absolutely sure there's nothing that can separate you from the love of Christ? Are you sure? Yes. How about that sin you committed yesterday that you didn't want to tell anybody about? Huh? That wasn't me. That wasn't it. How about the really bad one, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you think, you know, I remember 12 years ago, I should have never done that. I hope nobody ever finds out about that one. Does that one separate you from the love of God? There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Past, present, or future. So the question comes up, God has finished with your sins, how come you're not? Go ahead. I don't know, but why does God keep reminding me of my sins from 12 years ago like a tape recorder in my head? It just keeps going and going, and I'm like, oh. Well, I have two answers for that. One is it isn't He doing the reminding. Two, He's allowing it to happen because it's one of the old things.

I mean, it's just amazing how the Father would have us walk in faith. in such a way that we were always looking at Him. Always looking at the Lord Jesus. And always having our frame of reference in our position in Christ. All the time. No matter if Courtney ran you off the freeway. I'm not running anybody off the freeway. When you were explaining over the years that there was a point in time when there was a judicial or, I can't remember the right word, but where Jesus and God made a deal where I'm going to die for the sins of the world. And when he did that, every sin that was ever committed by anyone has been taken care of. That's correct. So, positionally, we are the righteous of God and Christ right now. Yes. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. The only requirement is that we believe Him. Yeah.

It's interesting that those who never believe Him, they go to hell knowing that their sins have been paid for. You know why they go to hell? They rejected the sun. Yeah, but what's the mechanics of it? They're still attached to the sin nature. The sin is still attached to them. What's that? I was saying the same thing you said. The sin is still attached to them.

Yeah, see, as long as you're attached to that sin nature, the sin nature is condemned according to Romans 8.3, and you're going to go where it's going. The real issue is, in terms of fire insurance, is I gotta get detached, somehow, from the condemned person who's going there.

And that's what the cross did, in addition to paying for the penalty of your sins. Well, sin requires death. If you haven't died, then when you die, you pay for your sin. But if you have died in Christ, your sins are paid for. So there's no payment to be made, and you're already seated in heavenly places anyway, so you just go where you already are. That's right.

When I first became a Christian, I used to feel the bitterness of the cross. My flesh didn't like it. It just always kind of felt bitter and difficult. And over many, many years, as God allowed me to see what sin is in my life, I've come to realize how precious and sweet the crucifixion was because it's separating me with my belief in Christ from sin. It's weird.

So, Reinhardt says, to finish up this question, such beloved brethren as a meager glimpse at this wondrous age of Romans. Blessed be God for such a pathway of liberty until we behold him. face-to-face. Behold Him who loves us face-to-face. Question six, what is the provision of grace in the walk of a believer? Is it un-inoperated progress from strength to strength?

Yeah, right off it makes an interesting point. He says, from what we've been dwelling upon, you will rightly conclude that the walk of the child of God should be, as far as sin is concerned, one interrupted progress from strength to strength. Now think about that word. I'm going to kind of go off what you just said there, Mike, and share all of it.

The provision of grace. What would it be like if we didn't have the provision of grace? What's the nature of that provision, right? So in 2 Corinthians 12, nine, it's been a verse that's been reoccurring in our family and my life, but my grace is sufficient for you. Strength is made perfect in your what? That's where you get the provision part. The cool thing about it is it's not a help in and of itself. It's not a temporary help. It's a sufficient, unending provision. It never runs out.

I think a lot of times we think of God's grace as running out in our walk. I've walked a long way here, Lord, and we've done it together. I'm tired, and it turns out there's only so many Bible verses I can read this week to get myself really focused.

The provision starts to run out in our life, but is that true? And who's fault is it when one gets into a situation where they believe that the provision will erase them and some die from our walk? Yeah, it's really interesting what Rite Out says in the next sentence, the pathway of the just. Your question was, if you didn't have grace, what are you left with?

And I'm thinking, I'm left with a legal provision. I'm left with, this is what I've got to do, or ought to do, or should do, or have been told to do, to get down the road so that, you know, sometime in the future I can, you know, I've made it, or I'm making it. You know, I was thinking when you were talking about we have gotten this far. I love that painting you see with the footprints in the desert on the sand and it only shows one set. There's never been two sets in my life. Never. I've been carried the whole way.

Mike also, you know, think about what Rideout says, you know, about provision of it. It almost sounds like we go to it and we get it. And I, you know, I think it's not the misconception. I think it's from Romans five, that's the operating system of which we operate now is we're fully immersed in grace. It's always available. It's, you know, it's us receiving it and saying, thank you, but it's, it's an operating system. And I think, you know, if the provision it's the ultimate provision that we are saved by grace through faith, grace was, you know, exhibited in offering salvation through Christ, but then we're immersed in the operating system and the provision is always there. Yeah. You hear me all right now without the feedback? Yeah. Okay. No, I agree with you, Courtney.

I think, you know, we've done the class on what grace is, you know, and to live In an environment of grace, it's like, you know, those of you who have ever gone scuba diving, you know, you take something from the environment you're comfortable in and you go down in the water and you're still breathing the air.

Well, what if you became a fish? You don't need to. So we went from a law environment to a grace environment. And a grace environment has no obligation but it does have principles. You understand what I mean? You don't need to have, there isn't any prerequisite to live under grace. God puts you under grace. He puts you in grace. He puts you in that unlimited, unmerited favor and blessing from him.

The problem we have, why don't we always live there? That's the last question. Why don't we always walk in grace? Why aren't we doing that? You know? I'll give you a good example. I don't know if you, and I don't follow this, but I see so many headlines about this. It's very interesting. I won't get the names right.

Who's the Prince of England that married a lady from the United States? Harry and Meghan. Harry and Meghan. Yeah, her name is Meghan. He's royalty, right? So he's acting like he isn't royalty. And so the press is all over him because he's not acting like he's royalty.

I and you live under grace. We are royalty. And we live and act like we're not. You see that? We live under grace. We live in this thing grace. And grace on my part is just to receive it. That's it. I don't have to prove to God that I'm worthy of it, or anything like that. He already knows what a loser I am. But he provided the grace, and he says, just by faith, believe me, and just walk. And I've been tortured with the Holy Spirit, and guess what? At the end of the day, you get to function in grace. You get to do that. And so, grace is a, Well, Lucifer Schaeffer said grace is the most hated thing in the world. You know why it is? Most hated thing there is. Why would grace be the most hated thing in the world?

It's because it... That's right. It's because it doesn't leave any room for you to do anything. And you have to be relevant somehow. I have to be noticed. I have to be somebody. Well, you are somebody in Christ, under grace, in grace. And it's all because of what somebody else did. Boy, that's different, isn't it? That is totally different. What's the law system all about? The law system is, you are somebody.

And you are going to do it. And people will recognize you that you did do it. And we're going to give you kudos for it. The more you do, the better you look. That's right. The more you do, the better you look. And maybe you get in faster. You don't have to wait in line, which is just ridiculous. When the believer starts in, you start there. You're not working to get there. You're already there.

We work from there. Does that make sense? Anyway, let's see. Right out says in terms of this, that that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that's what's born of the spirit is spirit. And we find that the impartation of the new nature does not obliterate the old nature. So you got two natures doing a happy dance in you, right? And so to be sure, we are known by our new nature. The old man has been crucified. Let's get that square. Who died on the cross?

We did. I did. Did my old man and my old nature die? No, it didn't. I died to it. Death means separation. So what did I get separated from? From that old nature. It's still alive and doing its happiness, trying to manifest itself through me, but I don't have to respond now because I've been separated from it. I'm dead to it. It isn't dead. I'm the one that's dead. I have been crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I'm living, walking around, functioning. And the life I now live in my body, the flesh, I live how? By the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. So my faith is focused on all of the wonderful things that are true of me according to God's word and not how I feel about them. Mike, if we don't live by faith in the Son of God, then we've got to live by the flesh.

There's no middle ground. Right. Yeah. You don't live in the middle of the bridge in a river. You're either on one side or the other. You're either living by faith or you're living by the flesh. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think one of the great things that the Spirit of God does in spiritual growth is teach us to abhor the flesh. in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing. Well, at first, and then I'm talking about it quite a few years, there's some, I don't want to mention it, but there's some good stuff in there. No, there isn't. No, there isn't. There's nothing there that's worth saving.

You can fix up the flesh, can't you? Yeah, sure. With a little holy water, we get it going. Yeah. Okay, so that's it. Next week, we won't have class the next two weeks, so JD, look at this, man. Got plenty of time to study. Yeah, so we'll start on Lesson 19. I don't know what the date is. Oh, let's see. The 7th, 8th of January, something like that. Okay.

Father, how we thank you for your word. And we thank you for your grace and all the provisions you have made and guaranteed us that we will be totally conformed to the image of your son with nothing lacking and that our position is in him right this very minute. We pray in his precious name. Amen.