Person and Work of the Holy Spirit lesson 24 cont.
Mike Doyle · Apr 10, 2022
Holy Spirit (2021-23), No. 57
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261926358075

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

I'm having fun going through all of my old notes and figuring out what page the PDF is and what page the book is on. Anyway, I'm trying to stay up to date. So we are in lesson 24. We've gone through the first three questions. of the fourth question. Question three was, why is there failure, for the most part, to keep the unity of the spirit today? To sort of put it together, maybe have it make some sense.

The first question was to distinguish between the unity of the body and the unity of the spirit. Do you remember what we talked about? What is the unity of the body? It's linked with Christ and linked with one another. Okay. And then what's the unity of the Spirit?

Notice the write-out said a couple of things. It is by the Spirit that the reality of divine things are brought home to us. Without Him, all the precious facts of the Church as the body of Christ with its various members and their functions would be meaningless and inoperative. I think a lot of times we don't realize that all of the functions, including the entire body of Christ, functions based on the person and work and the power of the Holy Spirit. We sometimes think that, well, I'm supposed to be in there hooking and jabbing and doing my thing, and there's a dependency on the Spirit. So, Riteout says, thus the unity of the body is a divine fact, but without the unity of the Spirit, it would have no power in our lives, and there would be no testimony to its truth.

I guess from a standpoint of what we've been sort of looking around for, for the last three plus years for some additional men to join us in the leadership of the church. Roger and I, I think, a couple of years ago came to the conclusion, well, the Holy Spirit's gonna have to do this. So we trust him for that, and sometimes you don't see any road signs that he's doing his thing, but he is. And so Bob is going to be the new pastor. I'm kidding. I just got the time out signal from him. Bob just had a seizure.

Anyway, so, and then we talked about what's the practical unity produced by the Spirit in the people of God. It is Holy Spirit among the people of God. It's when He, the Spirit, is permitted to impress the truth of the one body upon us and to lead us to act in accordance with divine principles. I think that's a really great answer.

So then the question, why is there failure to keep the unity of the Spirit? Why is there failure? Remember? He quoted one verse that is so applicable from the Old Testament. And that's where we're going to start today. What was the verse, remember? The verse is out of Judges. Question four says, what Old Testament verse does the author quote to show how men decide what is right? That everyone does what is right in his own eyes. Yeah. or everyone does which is right in his own eyes. So what's, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Chapter and verse, I couldn't find it. Can't find it? I couldn't find it in Judges, but I don't know the chapter and verse. I don't have it either. I'll have to look it up.

I think a write-out just refers to it as Judges. What's wrong with that statement? What's wrong with me living my life based on what I think is right in my own eyes? You don't belong to yourself. I don't? I belong to Christ, so what does that mean? Can't I just assume that what I'm thinking is Christ is directing me in the way that I should go? We can't set the standard for our own righteousness at all.

Yeah, that's a good answer. Everybody hear that? Judges 17.6. Yeah, and it's interesting as you begin to enter into the understanding. What was the verse?

Judges 17.6.

Judges 17.6. You got that, Mrs. Wilson? Okay. What's wrong?

I mean, we get up in the morning, we spend time with the Lord, we have quiet time or devotions, whatever you call them. Sometime during the day, maybe you read your Bible, or you study the questions because you don't want to look like a dummy on Sunday, whatever. And you spend time in God's word, and so you begin to assume that what's going through my mind is probably okay. So I'm going to live my life based on what I think is right.

What's wrong with that? It tells us the truth and the Holy Spirit helps us understand it. Okay, that's a great answer. It's exactly right, because a lot of times I think when we determine that some sort of a behavior is okay with us, the Spirit of God will say, no, you probably shouldn't be doing that, not because it's sinful, it just takes away from the time with the Lord, or it takes away from something that He has directed you to do.

You see that? Because Donna and I had a conversation this week out of 1 John, the verse is the pride of life. How's that verse go, Donna? the less of the flesh, the less of the eyes, and the pride of life. That's another one that you think, well, what's wrong with that? Less means a strong desire, a strong desire of what I see, and the strong desire of what my flesh wants. And what's wrong with pride of life somewhere?

It's got to be in the Constitution somewhere. What's that? It's American. That's right. I'm an American. So it's interesting that we have this sin nature and it's deceptive and it tries to persuade us that a lot of things that we do that don't apparently aren't, I mean we're not killing anybody, not shooting anybody, we're not stealing anything.

So what's wrong with my desires? What's wrong with my desire to be well? Anything from the flesh is against the spirit, 100%. So whatever the distraction is in the flesh is taking us away from things of the spirit, things of the Lord. So the flesh's only purpose is to drive us away or distract us or do whatever. So whatever, feeling good about ourselves, what's the focus ourselves. And the flesh is totally against the spirit.

We see that in scripture and that's all, whatever's out of the flesh is trying to push us away or distract us from the unity we have with the Lord and the spirit. I don't think we grasped the idea, at least early on in our Christian life, that this sin nature that we have, this flesh that we have, is 100% opposed to what God has desired for us to be as human beings. It never lines up with what God's provision is, ever. That's, you know, Paul in Romans 7. There is nothing good that dwells in my flesh. Nothing. And so you wonder why sometimes spiritual growth takes so long. Well, a big part of growing spiritually is to understand what the flesh is all about, and to be able to reject it when it presents itself. Well, couldn't you say that the Holy Spirit's the only one that can show some of those minor details? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's really right. And I think part of that, you know, if somebody I better not mention the name of the church, but somebody told me about a church in Denver that they're all excited about.

So I couldn't resist. I went and took a website and looked at it, you know, and it's a big growing church now. It has two churches and working on three. Very interesting in reading what we believe in and what we teach. It's all fleshly. It's taking God's Word and modifying it so it makes you feel good. And I was just amazed, well, I shouldn't be amazed, that a church like that grows. I mean, it must have a couple thousand people by now, or three maybe. And the reason is that the whole thing is geared to take God's Word and His idea of the church and worship and appeal to the man's flesh.

And it's all good. It's all good. But it is not the Lord. So. Mike, that's also like when we say about going to any Christian bookstore. It's all about what we can do or our efforts. It's everything focused on basically fleshly responses to how we ourselves can do things, what we can do. And it's not focused on the Lord. So it's not. You want to be happy? Not in the flesh.

But I mean, that's why I mean, that's why I think that church can grow so much because the feeding out there is mainly towards, you know, self and self helps and, you know, feeling feelings, feeling good. And that's exactly right. And the thing is, is that all the sheep are hungry. because the flesh is never satisfied. There's a searching going on all the time for something to satisfy me. They don't recognize that me is the flesh. You know, pour a little holy water on it and now it's good flesh.

Okay, question five. Quote, but we are equally shocked by a deliberate and pervasive, persistent ignoring of the unity of the spirit. What is your reaction to this question in the text? It's on page 124 of this book, page 54 in the text, or in the PDF.

Right, I'll says the conscious of this conscience of the same is shocked and rightly so at any moral delinquency or any lapse into fleshly ways Here's the kicker measured by Ordinary standards So give me an example of an ordinary standard How would you judge a moral delinquency based on an ordinary standard? I think ordinary would refer to fleshly. Culture.

It'd be nice to do that. You know, I've got a concern for doing that. I know there's certain churches who have certain standards, expectations, that are set. And they say you might operate those standards if you're a good fit. Fit well with your personality. Sure, sure. And it's a good job. Denomination? Denomination. Is that a club you belong to? Yeah, yeah. It's a good standard for medicine. Yes, we do. They do compete.

I don't know this guy's name, but you guys ever watch the series Justified? Remember when that was really popular? Well, there was an actor in there that was a villain, and he's really a good actor, and he's got these piercing eyes, you know, so when he looks at you like he's going to kill you, you believe him, right?

Well, it turns out that before Justified, before he got that role, that he said to the people in Hollywood, well, I'm a Catholic, and I'm not going to kiss somebody else's. I'm not going to kiss another woman. I only kiss my wife. So they blackballed him. What the heck is this guy's name?

And I always thought he was a Christian until I read that he was a Catholic. He may or may not be a Christian. But now he's back in grace again, he plays a great villain. And I thought when I was reading in the article, there's a standard that he set for himself that I don't know if Catholicism set that standard for him or not, because there are a lot of those Catholics who are just, you know, they have no standards at all.

Is that a biblical standard? First of all, I would question him as to, what are you doing being an actor to start with? What a sleazy profession that is. How do you measure what's good and evil, or what's acceptable or not acceptable, or what is a standard? CNN? There you go. or the Motion Picture Academy, and their rating procedure. So, how do you measure? You know what's interesting?

We all come from that tree in the Garden of Eden. What was the name of that tree? The knowledge of good and evil. We have it in our minds when we're first saved that really what happened is that we move on the left side, notice I picked left, on the left side were all the evil branches and on the right side were all the good ones. And so we're gonna make this little journey across the tree to the good branches, right? What we didn't realize was that God took us out of the tree, took us down the path in the garden and put us in another tree called the tree of life.

And that tree of life doesn't have good and evil standards. It just has holiness. And holiness is a much different thing than good and evil. Do you see that? How we behave and how we operate is not based on good and evil. It's based on whether it aligns with the holiness of God or not.

Anyway, I think that that's for right out to say, but we're equally shocked by a deliberate and persistent ignoring of the unity of the Spirit. Are we? If the unity of the Spirit in your body of believers begins to be ignored, are you shocked by that? You didn't even know it was going on. How can you be shocked about it?

The Blessed One bears patient witness to the oneness of the Church, its heavenly and separate character, its divinely provided order, and saints of God-established churches. Devise order and choose methods according to their own devising. Is that an endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit?" he asked. Let me give you another good example.

Remember when we were first studying 1 Corinthians? And there was disruption in the body. And there was, you know, there were schools of, well, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Paul, I'm of whoever. And there was immorality and all these other things. And there was an attempt by the Christians in Corinth to fix those problems by creating clergy.

We'll get some guys in there who will put the hammer down on these guys and get them all lined up going in the same direction. Could you say that having clergy around is a unity of the Spirit? What do you think? In other words, we're going to go through our group. We've got these guys over here that aren't demonstrating unity of the Spirit, so we're going to fix it. We're going to take a couple of guys out of this group, we're going to give them one of these, give them a badge that says, I'm in charge, and they're going to go fix it.

What's wrong with that? We're all used to clergy, every denomination has it. What's wrong with that? What's the problem with that is, whose church is this body of believers? Whose do they belong to? the Holy Spirit, right? And he's the one that determines, and he's the one that fixes problems, and he's the one that does everything. And it's difficult for us, I think, as believers, and that's why it's a really interesting section right here, it's difficult for us to depend on him and to trust him, because it's his church. It's his spiritual body, it's not an earthly body. I wonder about that though.

He specifically lays out in the church elders and deacons to administer to the body in a local way. You can't throw out everybody with that because it was established to be elders and deacons to set up the local body and to watch over and to grow. Mentor and and that so I mean it all Clergy if you call it clergy is not bad at you know multiple You're not supposed to have just one elder, but at least plurals you know elders So is there are some things are laid out for administration? So how do you pick elders?

Actually the spirit picks them actually yeah, you're led by the spirit if you The Lord raises them up and you see them. Yeah, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, if you're picking somebody, if they don't have the desire to do it, they'll never survive. Well, and they will just in their lifestyle demonstrate that God, and you can say, you can see it.

God said, look, I want this person and I want that person. And just because you were, you're a school teacher by profession doesn't mean you get to teach Sunday school. And also, I think, too, if there could be a... I guess we've seen this, the improper motive. You want the title of the job and you want that. You want the job. That's not good. I mean, it's for self at that point.

I think the only guys in the Bible that had the right to install people like that were the apostles. They're a special group of guys, you know. They had power and insight into things that few men ever have had. Those 12 guys did. So, you know, and you read 1 and 2 Timothy and you see how much time and effort Paul spends with Timothy to prepare him for, well, when Paul left he was going to hand over the mantle to him. And he was, Timothy was a good answer, a good name for him, because he was reluctant. And he was going to be the head of the church at Ephesus, was the head of the church at Ephesus. So he was a reluctant leader, but Paul recognized that he was the one that God had chosen, and so he Spent time with them, and he spent time with the elders in all of those churches because he equipped them so that they could equip the saints.

Because everything that happens, according to Ephesians, is within our body. Every person here is equipped for what reason? Why are you equipped? To edify the body. And everybody's involved in that process. Everybody is. There's plenty of people in our body of believers that edifies me all the time and helps me. And I don't just say something or suggest something.

I told you a couple of weeks ago, a guy called me one day in the middle of the afternoon. He said, you're doing OK. I said, I'm doing great. He said, I just was praying for you. I don't know why, but I just was. I said, well, thanks very much. And I hung up. It's really cool. I didn't ask him why he was praying for me, other than he said, I just thought about you and thought I should be praying for you. He edified me. You know, it didn't take a spiritual gifted man to do that. He just was praying for me.

Okay, any questions? All right, question six, which is the last question. In 1 Corinthians 9.13, And an example is given. What does the author say is the evil of sectarianism? So somebody who can read really good, read 1 Corinthians 9 through 13. It's four verses. And it could be one of you guys that are on the Zoom, too. We can hear you just fine. 9 to 13, please. We can't hear that. Wait a minute. Hold on twice. Got you on now. Are we good now? Sorry, I'm not used to this.

God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. Now, I mean this, that each one of you is saying, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

Okay. So what do you have here? You have, according to Rite Out, you have a failure to keep the unity of the Spirit. Okay? So, write down in your never to be forgotten notes, how to identify failure to keep the unity of the spirit or sectarianism. These are the verses that lay it out. Now, Rideout does a pretty cool thing. He has three areas that he's concerned about.

The first one is, in writing to the Assembly of Corinth as representing the entire church, The apostle uses unequivocal language as to its oneness. He uses unto the church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus. What does sanctified in Christ Jesus mean? Sanctified, what's that mean? Set apart. So he says you are uniquely set apart in Christ Jesus. That's who you are. That's your standing.

Called to be saints, or called saints. What are saints? Set apart ones. with all and every place who call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. So the first thing that Paul does is he talks about the unity of being a member of the body of Christ, that you're all one in him. And it doesn't matter if you live in Corinth or Ephesus or Denver. You're a member of the body of Christ. You've been set apart by God exclusively and sanctified in Christ Jesus. You're a saint. That is, the Church of God is one composed of all who are in Christ, saints by their calling, including all such in every place.

So, you're walking down the street in Lubbock, Texas, and you run into a fellow believer. Are you one with him? Absolutely you are. Or you're, I don't know, in Nebraska. Or how about Manhattan? The point that Paul is making is to look at the unity, the spiritual unity of every member of the body of Christ. I look around the room and you look around the room and you look at me. We're one. We're one. Closer than if we were married. I'm talking to the ladies now. Do you understand that? The oneness in Christ is a closer relationship than a marriage outside of Christ. You see that? OK.

Next one. He says, next he dwells at the beginning of the passage we have quoted upon the faithfulness of God, by whom they had been called into this holy fellowship, and who would preserve them to the end. So not only are we one, but we've been called into the faithful fellowship, and God is the one that's going to preserve us to the end. He's going to do it. You don't have to do it. He's going to do it. This is a great comfort in the midst of a bounding unfaithfulness of man to God because God never fails. If it was up to all of us, we'd all be down at watching some movie on Sunday morning or going to some sporting event or just hanging around.

The Apostle Paul had learned from credible source that sad state of the contention existing among them, and that was far from keeping the unity of the Spirit, by being perfectly joined together in the same mind and same judgment. So, are you all of the same mind that I am? And do I have the same judgment that you have? What do you think? First of all, same mind about what? What's the subject here? It's the unity of the Spirit. Do we have the same mind about the unity of the Spirit? We have the same judgment about the unity of the Spirit. Do we or don't we? What do you think? We should have. We definitely should have. We should know what it is, and we should know how it functions. And we should be involved in the keeping of it.

How do you get involved in the keeping of the unity of the Spirit? How do you do that? There you go. And how do I find out about that mind? God's Word. Sure. When you don't have the same mind and you don't have the same judgment, what do you have? You have a threat to division. Right? Now, is it a denominational threat? Is it a doctrinal threat? What do you think? Is it a political threat? What do you think? Are the questions too hard? I'll make them easier. It can be any and all things.

Anything that keeps our focus off Christ breaks the unity. Whether it's political, denominational, anything that takes the focus. It's like you're saying in a marriage. If the focus is off Christ, the marriage suffers. Because the commonality of the focus is gone. That's a really good example, I think. The marriage triangle. If you're focused on your spouse, you have problems. If you focus on the Lord Jesus, that unity shows up.

I think, contemporarily today, that the lack of unity in the body of Christ is either denominational or political. It's one of those two things. What does politics have to do with the body of Christ? When you get to heaven, there's going to be Republicans and Democrats and people in the middle who don't care? I think it's even beyond just political and denominational. not teaching according to the Word. I think it's just that it's more self-focused or whatever. It's just not teaching according to God's Word. That's, I think, what creates the division, and the flesh feeds on that. I agree. The flesh loves division. The flesh loves to be taken away. It can be political.

It can be denominational, but I think it's just not teaching where You were saying teaching about, I find a lot of bigger churches are more feelings and more visual and this and that. You can hide out in a big group. We were just talking about somebody about that, that they can go. go in and out and not ever be noticed. The individual teaching, maybe we talked about that last week, about a large church versus a smaller one.

You don't have the ability to mentor or to teach or whatever. So again, I think just expanding. I don't think it's just political or denominational. It's just not teaching accurately to the word of God. You made a really cool statement. If I turned it around, can flesh feed on the Word of God? No. Can't do it.

That's really it. And I was going to say, just to add to, I think when it comes to that and kind of sectioning off stuff like that, whether it be political or denominational, I think it does go back to that ordinary standards thing. And I think that it's all at that point how y'all were just saying it's more a personal effort or like that feel good state where people want to do whatever they and their group agree with, how they feel, make them feel better as opposed to, keeping the tie, the unity of the Spirit, for sure. It's all just our human, ordinary standards, as opposed to what we should be focused on. Right. The last principle, and I just noticed we're running out of time, is that he then goes into detail.

Corinth and all the Greek cities were where philosophy had sway. That was their big deal. He was familiar with various schools of thought. each with its special leader, and his followers would say, I'm of the one and I'm of that one. Now the saints had transferred this human state of things into the Church of Christ and were arraying themselves under certain leaders, thus forming parties and sects. Whether they made use of the honored name of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, against their will, or without their knowledge, or whether the apostle added these names by way of illustration, doesn't affect the point.

That was the problem there. That was the problem. And you know, it's interesting how we may not have a particular philosopher that we would aspire to, Yet we do have secular people that we appreciate their opinion more than somebody else. I used to say all the time that Rush Limbaugh was not the fourth member of the Trinity.

But so many Christians aspired to his philosophy that he really was a false teacher for a believer. He really was. Yet I think he saved. He said at the end of his life that his savior was Jesus Christ. Good for him. That was the only thing that counted. The rest of it was just language.

I think the point being too, I mean, you're talking about Paul and Apollos, they're great Teachers, I think the same as today. If you put any value or trust or reliability on a human, you're guaranteed to fail. No matter how good of a teacher they are, you rely on the word, not the person. And I think that's the point of this, is that no matter how good they are, Paul obviously gives us all about who we are in Christ. If we say we're of Paul, it's wrong. Or any teacher today, you know, whoever, you know, the teacher, the juror.

Or if you say, I'm of Jesus. Well, the problem with that statement is God gave certain revelations to Paul that he never talked about. So the idea of the church and the unity and the spirit and co-crucifixion of death, burial, and resurrection, all of that was Paul. The Lord Jesus didn't talk about that. So, well, does that make Jesus better, or to be followed, or Paul better to be followed?

No. It's the Spirit of God who reveals what his word is to us so that we become unified in the Spirit, okay? You've got to shut down because the musicians need to go sing. Let's pray. Father, how we thank you today that we get to spend this time understanding your Word and growing in your Son and recognizing the unity of the Spirit is a really important aspect of us as believers unified in the body of Christ. We thank you. We pray in his name. Amen.