The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit Lesson 30 Part 4

All righty, and unfortunately I'm losing my voice. I had two days of doing, it's called sonar jetting, it's a way to rehabilitate wells and you blow them up. We do like a deck cord and we clean the wells up, and the guy who was doing it was just, amazingly enough, I know you won't believe this, but he talks more than I do. And so my voice, I think after two days, two eight hour days, right before he came up here, I think my voice is gone, so...

Anyway, this is lesson 30 of the Personal Work of the Holy Spirit class, lesson 30. We're going to start on question number 9. And again, this is... Let me pull this up. This is in... The questions are for... chapter 3, I believe. And so, how or in what does the Holy Spirit sanctify us? Kind of a difficult question, a little bit, didn't word it too well, but how does he do it and what does he sanctify us in? Come on now. just because I'm 5,000 miles away. I'm closer to you, Miles, I think, right now. So how about this? I'll give you John 17, 17.

Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So what does he sanctify us in? Truth. Yeah, truth. And so, again, what is truth? So what is truth? He's sanctifying us. What is truth? God is truth. What? God is truth. Yeah. What does it say in that verse that I just read? Sanctify them in the truth. That last half of the verse. John 17, 17. The Word. Yes. Your Word is truth. He sent you out. I'll go ahead. Right up.

Put it this way, that the how is the Holy Spirit sanctifies us by the one offering of Christ in death, perfect and eternal. Yeah. So again, the key here is the sanctifying. What was sanctifying? What does that mean? Set apart. So we're set apart in what?

Truth, which is his word. We get this also in John 16, verses 13 and 14. When He, the Spirit of Truth comes, He, remember, I also underlined all these in this verse, remember that this is a person, not an it, or a force, or a nebulous thing. The Holy Spirit is a person.

But when He, the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak. He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify me, for he will take of mine and will disclose it to you.

So again, the Holy Spirit is the one that sanctifies us or sets us apart in God's Word or His truth. So that's another, you know, the person and work of the Holy Spirit. One of the works is to set us apart in His Word. So, you know, I think about that when we have this class.

This is where he's setting us apart in his word. As we study his word, we're beginning to be set apart from the world because it's the word is truth. And there's not a lot of truth in the world. We're being set apart in that word. So, yeah. I think it's maybe we spend a lot of time talking about what we've been set apart from. I don't think we talk enough about what we've been set apart to and how the setting apart to is to influence how we live. Yeah. What are we set apart to, to? Yeah. So the question to anyone, you know, we're, we're set apart to through Christ.

This is kind of in the review. Why I wanted to go through the review a little bit is that we get kind of myopically in a very small area. We dig in and it's really great. We dig into the Word. But the Holy Spirit has so many different functions in our life. Sanctifying them or setting them apart in truth. Your Word is truth. So He's setting us apart to the truth. And what is the truth? His Word. What is in John 1? Who is the Word? The Lord Jesus is. Yes.

So if you connect all those, sanctify them in the truth, your Word is truth. So He's sanctifying us, putting us in, setting us apart in the truth. But the truth is Christ. He's the Word. You know, and it's the dual part that, you know, we have the Word, the written Word, but He is the living Word.

And so we're set apart by the Holy Spirit to be in Him. And again, this is all that, you know, we studied a lot about the individual, which we're going to get into the next chapter, which was corporate. But we're set apart in Him. But I like this part where we're sanctify them in the truth. You know, we're being set apart into the truth. And that's, you know, do you think that when you're reading God's Word, that you're being sanctified, you're being set apart in His Word? You know, I don't, I don't normally, you know, and thanks to Mike, you know, I like, I read a lot, you know, every day I try and read, you know, not to gain knowledge, but I read it to know him. And that's what, you know, he's setting us apart in truth. Your word is truth. Christ is the word.

So, so how does that play out in a practical application of the viewpoint that the believer has? every day and that's really the crux of my question because we do spend so much time set apart from, which means set apart from whatever the circumstances are in my life, but to be set apart to him with his life increasingly manifested through us, which is a total change of viewpoint and value system Does that really matter or am I just mostly worried like the Lord Jesus had the power to feed 5,000 people and that's why they followed him. It was my benefit to do so rather than have an actual change in the way I viewed things. I think that's all part of the conforming us to the image. That we are being conformed to the image. which is he's setting us apart in his word, which is truth, which is Christ. So he's setting us apart in Christ.

And I, and I think that's the key. And I, you know, there are a lot of these things we're going to touch on a little bit later, excuse me, in the, in the lesson where what does it really mean? You know, we say these terms a lot of times, but what does it really mean? You know, we, we say it, but sanctify them in the truth set apart in the truth.

So, You know, I think I look at that more, Mike, is the conforming to the image. Yeah. That as as you look at his word and you look at who Christ is, you're looking at who you are and who you're being set apart in. But it's it's very rarely thought of when you're reading that, you know, you're not thinking about that.

I was going to say on that regard, You know, when you think of the Word, I think quite often we're talking about the Spirit. Power and truth are two core characteristics, or whatever you want to call it, with the Holy Spirit. And I've been thinking a lot in the last couple of weeks about the Holy Spirit.

You know, when at creation, it was the Word of God that conveyed that powerful force to create the universe. It's always the Word of God that is that power. I'm not sure how to describe that exactly, but the power of God is conveyed or communicated through the Word of God.

And something that I was listening to one of Hal Malloy's messages, he said the transformation process, so talking about that sanctification, that conforming, he said the transformation process is coming to understand who we already are in Christ. And I thought a lot about that because, you know, we have the word that tells us who we already are. There was a, you know, that word of who we are in Christ had a powerful recreation effect. And we receive that by faith. It becomes effectual when we receive it by faith in our own lives. And then there's a process of coming to understand what has already taken place, what has already happened. I think you said it, and I have a whole series here, a whole thing that I've studied on faith.

Why don't we believe what he says? You know, and it's the Holy Spirit's job to convince us of these truths. It's plain in the Scriptures, so much truth about who we are. When you say who we are in Christ, what those positional truths are, you know, Lewis Barry Chafer's 33 things, or, you know, there's other lists that, you know, get much more what's true about us. Why do we believe that? You know, and that's really where I think the Holy Spirit's job is to convince us in His Word. It goes back to what you said about the power and all that.

In Romans 1, everybody is without excuse. We see the power of God. Every individual created sees the power of God. But they don't see the person of Christ in nature. You see God's power everywhere in the world. But it's the Word that shows us to Christ. It shows us who Christ is. And for us believers, that shows who we are in His life, in His body.

And that's really the whole emphasis here. That's what the Holy Spirit's job is. It's to convince us of those things. Like I said, I have 30 pages of things that are true about us, or the things He's told us. And yet, do we believe them all? And I think it's going to be the lifetime. This is the spiritual growth part of a believer's life, is that the job of the Holy Spirit is to convince us and convict us of all these truths. And, you know, it would be wonderful if I snap my fingers and I believed everything that's true about me.

But for some reason, God is taking me and every one of us through different paths to convince us of these truths of who we are in Christ. And this is what the Holy Spirit's job is. And again, it's to get to the point where we believe what He says in His Word. His Word is truth. It's the Holy Spirit's job to convince us, yeah, it's true. And so, I think this is very important for our class.

All right. Unless anything else, we'll move on to question 10. We can go through this. excuse me, one of the four features which characterize the indwelling of the Spirit. And I'll just go down because it was, this is through Rite Out, just what he thinks, what characterizes the indwelling. Number one is the permanency of it.

This is in John 14, 16, and 17. I will ask the Father and He will give you another Helper that He may be with you forever. That is the Spirit of Truth. So there's a permanency of this, which again, from a comfort level, there's never a time, like in the Old Testament, where the Holy Spirit would come upon somebody and leave them. We have the permanency of never to leave. And that should give us comfort in any trial, in any blessing, in anything. The Holy Spirit is still indwelling us and working to conform us to the Spirit of Truth. The next one is the enlightenment of it, John 16, 13. But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. And again, that's kind of another comfort is, and that's why I think this is a process of the spiritual growth.

He will guide you into all truth. And again, I should have looked at the tenses of all these things in the Greek, but I think this is a continuous action. And it will continue throughout all of our life. That He will guide you in all truth. He will, through our entire lives, He'll be the one who is sanctifying and setting us apart in the Word and in Christ. So, the third one was the liberty of it. Romans 8, 2.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. You know, this is another one that, you know, we were talking about, Nate and Miles, like, we know this, and why do we still answer to the flesh? We've been set, I mean, if we understand and are convinced of this truth, we have been set free from the law of sin and death. And yet, as Mike says, when music starts playing, why do my feet start moving? Why do I still sin? Why do I still do this? When I know I've been set free, I do not have to do it, but I do it.

And that's the power of the flesh. And again, to me, it's one of those ones that you can prove to those people who think that there's just a single nature. Why am I doing this if I just have only the life of Christ in me? The life of Christ doesn't do the idiotic things that I do and sinful things that I do. It's the flesh. We have a sin nature co-living in us with the Spirit.

If you think about that, that's the reason why sanctification is so necessary. The process of transformation, confirmation, conformity, and sanctification are all processes that happen in a believer's life from the moment that he was separated from the penalty of sin and now being separated from the power of sin. It's interesting because that separation is to the truth, which Miles, you mentioned that the power is related. So the power of sin is being contrasted with the power of truth in God's Word.

If those weren't processes, then, you know, we could say, oh, that happens all at one moment and it's one nature. But that's not the way the Bible talks about our walk. Right. You know, that's one of those ones where I can't question God. And yet I go, why didn't you just take care of this the minute I believe, you know, and for some reason, and I can't question his process, but it's a process.

He did not kill the sin nature in our flesh. We've been set free from the power of it. Ultimately, it's the three Ps, the penalty. We've been set free from the penalty through His payment and His acceptance by God of the crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection. The resurrection proves it. So the penalty is gone.

Right now, we're in the presence of it. In the future, we're away from the presence of it. We have the power of it still acting on us. In the future, we're minus the presence of it. Again, it's a process. We're freed from the bondage But we still have the power still working on us. But in the future, the presence of sin is going to be gone, which is a wonderful thought for us. Last one, the freshness of it. This was in John 4, 13 and 14.

Jesus answered and said to her, this is the woman at the well, everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. This is one of those ones, going back, what does that mean?

Do we understand that? a well of water springing up to eternal life. To me, that's freshness, that's life, that's, you know, I'm in the water business. Without water, you die. And I think this is, the spirit is, the spiritual progress of a believer is like drinking out of an endless spring. If you keep drinking from it, you thrive, thirsty or looking for something else. This is a well that springs up with eternal life.

But do we think about that daily? When he's working with it, we clearly see that the Holy Spirit is working. Do we see that, that life is brought forth from the Holy Spirit? You know, I don't think we see this a lot of times. We take it for granted. A lot of times in the blessings, you know, I think about this one.

This one, when I was doing it, is kind of the blessings trap. When you get, you know, this refreshing water and you feel good, you look at the water and the response it has, not to the giver who gave it to you. So, I think this is one that, but it's telling us here, it's like drinking out of eternal spring. So, any other comments on this one? I think there's always a practical application of, like the woman at the well, and the water will spring up.

And, you know, I had a thought, as you were saying, why did the Lord leave nature within us and we have to function and live by faith? I think it's because He uses us just in the way our life goes. to demonstrate to other people that there is another life. There is a, like Mawoi used to say, that the hope that's within us, other people see it.

And they see it because from a worldly standpoint, there isn't any hope that you're going to overcome who you think you really are in the flesh. But from a believer's standpoint, as you grow in Christ and the conformity happens, I think is shining out of the Lord Jesus in your life. And they're just things that are observable by other people just by the way you live your life. Like what's important to you, what isn't, what your value system is, how you just conduct things.

And I think that's as good a reason as any why he leaves this in nature in us. Because we have no other job is to demonstrate that that Christ on the cross has overcome sin. The only thing I'd question about that is, just think how much better our witness would be of Christ if we didn't have a sin nature. I don't think it would be. I think, well, because when people look at you and they see that something's different, there are also those times when I'm not a great witness. You're a Christian, oh really?

I don't question his plan. It obviously is the best plan ever. But it is interesting that he has left us with this in nature. I guess this is the process of conforming us, which maybe through this process is different than just you know, life and not having to worry about this in nature. So, I mean, it's like what you said, but it is kind of interesting that he does it that way. And again, I can't question how he's doing it.

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, I think in terms of us being a vessel, we're a tool. I don't mean that in any other way than to say that As believers, we now understand what it means to have been lost and to now be saved. We understand what it looks like and feels like and experience what it means to be in darkness, but now being a light. And I think that somehow in God's sovereignty and in his planning of this, he decided to use a broken man, woman like us to be a light and an ambassador and a vessel for the truth that sanctifies these folks. That's what that John passage is talking about, sanctify them in the truth. Separate them unto the truth, which means there's deception and lies and constant Noise that is in opposition to the Lord and his word and we understand what that is because we we can look back on our history of the old man and know what the old man becoming acquainted with the old man is just as important as becoming acquainted with the new and And that's what people see in us in a lot of ways is that you're not a perfect person, yet you're a light. And somehow you have something about your life, like Mike was saying, that's either ordered or conducted or characterized in a different way. But because you were lost and you are now saved, that is a different testimony to who and what Christ has done in terms of salvation than had he instantly perfected us for time, eternity.

But I'm not saying that I understand. I do have questions around what you were talking about there, Courtney. But God delights in using the weak to bring truth to those that haven't understood it yet or seen it. You know, David, as you were talking, I thought about something else, too.

You know, when you look at it, the angels long to see us in Christ, and all of creation is waiting to have it reveal us. And I think You know, if we just change right away, we'd almost kind of be like the angels, you know, suddenly created and we're done. You know, there's a reason why he's taking us through this process. Different than angels, different than, you know, any other created being, he's taking us through this. And, you know, it's to, you know, maybe from the soul's perspective, you know, shape and form us for eternity.

But it's different than every other creation that he's made. I just don't think we could know him if that sin nature was not continually barking at us. We would not know him in the way that he's designed us to know him. If it was instant knowledge, we would not have had the opportunity to grow by faith. Because there would be no additional faith.

So that's a rabbit hole for sure, but there's something in the way that the Lord delights in using the weakness of our state, yet giving us a brand new history in which to embrace by faith over the course of our life. And somehow God orchestrates that for His purpose, right? And be a part of that is such a humbling thing, you know, to be that vessel. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you're saying JD there, that was along the lines of what I was going to say.

Somehow, Malloy had said in a message I was listening to, he talked about the sin nature being an infinite onion. Has anyone ever heard him refer to that? But he said that Christ is also an infinite onion. It sounds funny, but yeah, anyway, he was talking about how you just keep peeling back the layers. And he said the same kind of thing.

I think there's a contrastive learning process. If we didn't still have the sin nature in us, we wouldn't have such a clear contrast within ourselves by which we can grow to know Christ more fully, more clearly, and more intimately. Yeah. Again, I think it's shaping us for eternity. You know, he's working on the soul, you know, and shaping us who we will be throughout eternity. And yeah, it's an interesting process. But anyway, let me move on.

So, Miles, you can actually get some time and teach the next lesson. So, we're trying to go through a year and a half here in a couple of weeks. So, okay, what do communion and the anointing of the Holy Spirit mean? So, first of all, what does communion mean? having a common life, sharing and participating with his thoughts and feelings?

Yeah. That's good. Communion means sharing or participating. That's what the write-up did. So what does communion with the Holy Spirit mean? It's like fellowship. He points out the same word as fellowship. Yeah. And and he puts it this way community of the Holy Spirit means sharing or participating in his thoughts affection purposes You know, I'm I'm wondering do it do I do that, you know do I consciously do that You know communion with him.

I'm sharing his thoughts affections and purposes these those ones when we say it and I you know right out puts it there, but I'm like How does that really in a daily life manifest itself? And I'm not 100% sure how that is, but he's taking us through that process. Is it your job to make sure that you remember all that? No, I just, you know, when he says that, you know, right at, I'm just trying to see how you know, in shoe leather, how that works out. Yeah.

Because, I mean, we read this, and I read it, and I go, okay, what is it, you know, what's that in my daily life? Yeah, I think that question is a good one, because there is the, well, I read about positional truth, I read about what the Spirit of God is doing, but, you know, how come I'm not walking in it like it's laid out in the Word? And I think the answer is because we resist him, because we don't believe him, because we don't value what he's doing.

Right. And it comes back to what we were saying in almost every question. Do you believe what he says is true about us? Yeah. And if we don't, we're not sharing his affections, thoughts, you know, direction, His purposes. So it comes down to believing what the Word says, and that's what He's convincing us of, that it's true. Well, and if I recognize that this is a process that He is implementing in me, and for lack of a better way to say it, it's our job to let Him do it. Yeah.

And so, you let Him do it by believing Him, And like Paul told Timothy, give yourself wholly and entirely to these things. That's the letting him do it. Whatever way, wherever you want to take me, whatever you want to do, I'm in. I think this comes with spiritual growth.

As you grow in the knowledge of Christ, 2 Peter 3.18, growing the grace and knowledge for the Lord Jesus. That's when you begin to commune with, as you grow in that grace and knowledge. It's just part of your life. It's not a measurement or metric or anything like that. It's just a manifestation of who you are.

It's more important to you than whatever else you may value in your You know that well, I'm not gonna do this that the Lord would have me do because I like doing be better Right. So the Spirit's job makes one of the things he does is he makes doing God's will Import not only important to you, but desirous that you do Yeah, you know you want to know All right. What does anointing mean? So, on this one I went to Zodiates. Of Christians as anointed or consecrated, set apart to the service and ministry of Christ and his gospel by the gift of the Holy Spirit. So, anointed, well, Dan never liked that, but the anointing, well, he did it from Greek, so he could use the translation anointed and consecrated.

So, if you look at If you look at 2 Corinthians 1.21, now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God. So, you know, kind of at the end I said, so communion equals sharing or participating. Anointing equals set apart for service. Both by the Holy Spirit. So do you think every one of us has been set apart to serve? I believe so, deserving at whatever.

We're not just a set apart so we can sit and listen. Well, again, are we measuring? I don't want to measure how much you did versus what I did, and I'm going to compare that. I think he's doing it and using it. one hungry heart. Your job may be just to flower along the way. If we start measuring how much and that, I think he's using us individually in different ways. I'm not suggesting that we measure. What I'm suggesting is that we understand that the whole process of sanctification is for service of whatever service He would have us do. And it isn't a measurement thing.

It's just I must realize that part of being a Christian is to serve the Lord in whatever capacity He wants. And I don't ever look at you to see how you're doing, because I don't know what God's doing in your life, you know, in terms of what He's called you to do. I think a lot of believers think that God exists to serve us and that our whole job is just to sit down and listen. I don't think that's what he would have us do.

I think he has something that we would be involved in the edification of the body of Christ, every single one of us. Well, that goes back to what every single one of us has a gift. Now everything everybody has a gift and what does the gift for is it for our pleasure our enjoyment our whatever? No, it's to edify the body, right? So that everybody is to use the gift. So whatever their gift is and it's solely for edifying the body, right, you know, so Everybody you can serve in some some fashion. Sure. I was gonna say one thing.

I do think we're set apart to listen But I don't think that's all what that we do The only way that we are sanctified in truth is by listening to the truth. So that's a big piece of what we're set apart to. Learning our new history, sitting and listening and learning and knowing Him is very much a big part of that. And the other thing is that the service that each of us may have that God has set us apart to, or in this case anointed us, First of all, we're anointed in Christ, and then from there we start to see our place in the body and where we fit.

But there may be aspects of the Lord using each of us to serve in ways that the others don't see, and it may not be all the time in the church body, there may be service that is gifting, and it's all for the purpose of edifying the church. Well, it might be as being a dad, being a husband. That's right. Yeah. All of those things. That's right. Being a man, being a woman. Yep. Yeah, all of those. You know, an evangelist, you know, could bring the gospel to people. You know, that's outside of the body, per se. Yeah.

I think if we think of the thought of a vessel in connection to being set apart, right? You might set apart a particular vessel for a certain use. And I think that's the positional nature of our anointing. We've been set apart for a particular use by the Holy Spirit. That's the positional thing. And then there's the conditional coming to recognize that, realize that, and have that carried out through us by faith.

Does that make sense? mm-hmm yeah yeah well I'd love to get through question 12 if we can do it quickly so it can be just the last chapter that we go through next week so but this is those ones where the terminology is Do we really know what it means? So, what does it mean to walk in the Spirit? I find this is a common term used by Christians. However, what does it really mean in common or layman's terms? You're going to do that quickly, huh? I will set that up, tee that up for next week, because I really think you need to think about that, because we use these terms, as I was going through this, we use these terms, and do we really know what it means? You know, we flippantly, not flippantly, but we kind of, you know, say these terms, and do we really know what it means? What does it mean to walk in the Spirit?

So, contemplate that for next week, and we'll start there, and then hopefully we can get through the Chapter 4 questions pretty quick. I don't have as many secondary questions for you, so we'll get through that one. So I was hopefully we'll get to the next lesson here and by next week or after next week. So let's close.

Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you for this time. We thank you that we can join even thousands of miles away from each other and still have the fellowship and the teaching. We thank you again just for as we explore all the functions of the Holy Spirit and what it means to a believer. It ultimately comes down to faith, and that's what the Holy Spirit is doing. One of the primary goals is to work in the individual to just show us the truths that are true about us in Christ, and again, just to convince us of those things so we manifest those without trying, because that's who we are. We're living the life. Christ out in each and every one of us so we just we thank you again for this time to study the personal work of the Holy Spirit and we just pray for the next meeting again just to open up the word and prepare our hearts to receive it and we we just thank you for all these things in Jesus name we pray amen