Person and Work of the Holy Spirit Lesson 35 cont
Mike Doyle · Oct 23, 2022
Holy Spirit (2021-23), No. 84
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926192904444

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

So it must be because I'm teaching, it's taking so long to get to Lesson 35. We have Lesson 35. I think we made it to two questions last week. We discussed that Scripture is the voice of God, it's the Word of God, it's the basis of all knowledge. Russ, how are you? How are you feeling, man? Well, I'm getting better. All right. Yeah, I'm getting better. I just still have this crazy rash. I don't know what it is. It's all over my body and it's like a painful rash. It only affects your sleep at night, so it's not a big deal.

Okay. You work a lot better this week than you did last week, I have to say that. My daughter helped me to get a haircut. Maybe that's it. Thanks for asking, I love you guys. So, we're also on Lesson 35 and we're going to start in Question 4. And the question is, why is it that they can quite understand more than the wise of this world. Why is that?

First of all, do you accept the premise? Do they in Christ have more wisdom than No? Yes? Maybe? No, their wives don't have the capacity. That's exactly right. If the Word of God is what it says it is, and even though you're a babe in Christ, you have an understanding from that Word that gives you more wisdom than the most educated, experienced non-believer ever. Except I promise.

So, why do we send our kids to college then? Good question. What's that? Good question. Oh, thank you. Why do we do that? You know, we have to function. I couldn't be an engineer unless I went to college. Right. So, I mean, you can't throw all college out. You know, there are disciplines. Echol couldn't be a doctor unless he went to eight, 10 years or 12 years or whatever.

I mean, it's not that college is the thing. It's the, you know, I guess when you pose that question, to me it's, you know, if you no comparison. So what little knowledge you have of God is much greater than any knowledge of the world that you have. I think the other aspect too is the fact that a believer who spends time in God's Word and is directed by the Lord to go to college gains so much more out of it than the non-believer does because he sees the wisdom in it. that be the case. And so there's a purpose, like you say, to be an engineer.

You think, but most college students that I've met lately that I've observed, you ask them what their degree is going to be in and it's in some pie in the sky nonsense, how could it possibly, but they somehow, well I've got the sheepskin now, so I'm employable. I think it's just a matter of putting... I think it's a matter of perspective and priority, right?

Paul had to learn how to make tents, but that was an enabler to the ministry that we were given. And I think if we see our education I mean, there's also other perspectives to education, but we see that there's a priority over the wisdom of God's Word and the practical application of God's Word in our lives. It doesn't negate the need for education in making pens, for example, but it does give us the biblical worldview in order to wrap our minds around that education and understand Who is the source of all knowledge, right? Instead of taking just rote facts and information and trying to assimilate them and get a viewpoint from your own human framework, we have a framework of thinking that can be applied to all areas of knowledge, and those areas of knowledge can be useful, not useful in some cases.

I would think that one of the most relevant dichotomy is is in the area of seminary because and even what used to be good ones you go there in four years or six years or however many years and come out with degrees and you listen to some of these people and you wonder what what are they talking about you know they may be Greek scholars they may be They may be what they are in terms of their theological expertise, but they don't have very much of an intimacy or an acquaintance with the Lord Jesus, which is what the Word of God is designed to do. But I don't think they're taught that either.

There's a danger there, right? If you think you're going to seminary to go into ministry, go into vocation, you think that you might be going to seminary to get closer to the Lord. Those are good reasons. I did quite a bit, 30 hours I think of it. However, it didn't draw me closer to Christ in and of itself. It was the Word of God that did that. That's right.

So even through seminary there is the opportunity for students to come to know these truths, but they get wrapped up in the systems of the seminaries, right? And that's where, again, that perspective gets on the system as opposed to the person. Sure.

What was it we were talking about on vacation, where theologians in seminaries, they sit around and they have to come up with an opposing view, so they have something to argue about. Somebody said that, and I thought, yeah, you know, that it really is kind of the way it is. You get a line of thinking and theology going, and then somebody says, well, we've got nothing. What are we going to talk about? We all agree, well, I'm going to come up with something. that we don't agree about, and that's what we're going to debate about.

You know, the simplicity of it is interesting. Why wouldn't you send your kids to elementary school? Well, if they can't read, how are they going to be able to read the Bible? You know, if they can't organize their thoughts in a comprehensive manner, how is the Word of God going to be apprehended? It's critical.

So you take, the point of the question that Rideout makes is that you take the most worldly educated man and put him next to a not very well worldly educated man who's a believer, has a knowledge, has a vein of understanding. He's a much wiser person than the guy with all the experience. And I think all you have to do is turn on CNN to show you that that's true. But think of it like this, Mike. I mean, if you ask a worldly educated person, you know, why is the sky blue? You're probably going to get about 15 to 20 minutes of science. If you ask a five-year-old believer, they're going to tell you, because God did it. Who's more right? You know, who has...

Sure. Sure. But if you take that perspective, God did it, but he also created the final authority of God's Word. So you still understand scientifically why the sky is blue, but if it's based on the fact that God did it, then you're looking at it through a totally different framework. Yeah, you are.

I remember one time somebody asked me a similar question about scientific research. And his answer was kind of interesting. He said, well, if God calls you to be a researcher, a scientist, You start tracking on something you're trying to get into that maybe no one has ever seen before. And he said, what God does is he slowly reveals the secrets to people.

This is what it is. And it's like, oh yeah, he did that. And so the perspective is really what's important. Some other things come to mind here, because we're educating the kids, and so we're thinking about these kinds of things quite often. And so with this idea of the babes knowing much more than the wise and prudent, I like the next statement that Rhino makes.

He says, they have accepted the truth that God has spoken. And you've said this. God said it. That settles it. And if you start from there, you don't stumble. But in seminary, if we're using that example, we're taught how to interpret this, and the interpretive method really plays a role in whether or not you're getting to the truth of what God spoke versus how we interpret it. And so it introduces this interpretive methodology that's not grounded by rightly dividing the truth. You get a new interpretive, and then you can't take God at his word. You have to redefine certain things in order to make it fit your social agenda or whatever. And that's where the dangers have come, is that it's point to that, because if we can take God at his word, then our interpretive methods should never get in the way of that. It should be in line with that. So that's...

God's word is the most amazing thing on the planet, I think. Because in it, there's literally the answer to everything. And not only is there an answer to technical questions or immediate questions about circumstances. But there's also this capacity of the Word of God to reveal God through that, through His Word. So I find that there's no substitute for God's Word anywhere.

Or dependence upon it. Yeah. Because the moment you get independent, that's when you're not disbanded. That's what it's talking about. Yeah, every once in a while somebody will hand me a book and say, this is a really good book, you ought to read it. And usually it's some secular book, you know.

And I just don't have time. And the other thing I find is no matter how great the literature is, if it isn't involved in the Word of God, it's not worth knowing in my mind. It's not worth spending the time or the energy to, you know, I was a minor in English in college and so I read Shakespeare and Bacon and all these guys and great. There's nothing like the Word of God, nothing like it. And it will take your, when you have someone who's really skilled in creating a storyline and they're The grammar is just wonderful and the way in which they can portray it is just terrific.

The problem is it's all self. And at the end of the day it's not the Lord himself. And so I'm entertaining the flesh doing that and I would rather spend my time doing something else, you know, with the Lord. But I have to get up and go to work every day. I have to live with my wife. I have everything that's in front of me that I need to know to function, to be an engineer, to do whatever.

The trouble is, like, Courtney, if you get too smart, then there's an expert witness. I think what's interesting is that Braddock goes on to say about the simple reason that they believe in God. And so I kind of put your statement with a lot of times what Courtney says. you know, the fact is that God said, thus saith the Lord, and God said, if that settles it, but do you believe it? And then that's the combo there, right?

And that's where the babe concept that I think Radha was trying to get us to is that We settle our minds on the truth of God's Word wholeheartedly, and that's a dependence thing. What is the Holy Spirit's role in that, right? What is He doing? We pray for enlightenment. You know, we want to be enlightened to the Word of God. We want to be able to understand how it applies to our life. And that's where the Holy Spirit gets to apply what the Lord said.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's exactly right. You come across something in God's Word and you believe it because He said it. It's like, unless it tells you something, you don't question it. You say, yeah. But then there comes a time, especially with God's Word.

I'm just kidding. Most of the time. I know. Well, it's like my brother always says about his wife, he says, honey, have I lied to you lately? I lied to you lately. But you read something in God's Word and you accept it because it is God's Word. But then there comes this time when it gets worked out and where you get persuaded about it. You settle down and not only that, you understand. You took God at his word, you may not have understood really what he's talking about until he proves, he's always proving how faithful he is to us and how And he shows us something that he means it and it is real and it is true. And so there's this, we call it a testing time, but it's always a testing to prove us. It's always that way. And so that principle alone needs to be learned. All right. Question five.

Just as God breathed into Adam's nostrils, so he breathed into his word. Rideout says, what does that mean? He quotes, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, meaning it's God breathed. So when God breathed into Adam's nostrils, Adam became a living soul, and the word, he breathed the breath of lives, it's plural. Adam got more than one life, one kind of life. So his word is the same thing, it's a lie. Breithaupt says that when Adam became a living intelligent being in the image of God, so with all the proper limitations necessary, the spirit has been breathed into the word, or has breathed the mind of God into what is thus his own voice for men. And maybe that's a better way to explain what I mean about secular literature. You know, this breathing is a really special thing.

And I know all of us have You know, read, studied, taught a scripture, and then we're back at it, that same scripture, a few years later, and we start to see things we never saw before. Is that because God withheld the truth from us? No, I think He's always expanding us to contain more of Him. And so, even His Word is limitless in terms of its content. how we know things of him.

So, it's pretty interesting because it's not, it isn't based on the fact that I studied harder than the guy sitting next to me, or I stayed up nights, or I put more effort into it. Is that true of God's Word? I put more effort into it? I'm probably going to be spiritually more savvy than the guy next to me? What do you think? I think that's a trick question. Well, it's a great question for a guy who's lazy like me.

You know, what is effort? You know, putting effort in, if it's spending time with him, is that effort? Well, and see, so that leads to the next question. Where'd the effort come from? Well, I mean. Or the motivation. You know, if I want, I desire to seek Him and His Word. Is that effort or my self-effort, or is that the Holy Spirit prompting me to know Him more? Yeah. I think it's motive.

You know, I've related a thousand times, you know, me trying to memorize verses. Sure, because I wanted to be like the, you know, the old brethren. Never went anywhere. Yeah, that meant it's not a self-effort. The first time that happened was a surprise to me. You know, I saw him in a circumstance in just a verse, and I never forgot that verse.

Because the experience and the verse went together. It has an impact on you. I think that's the work of the Spirit. You know, I go back a little bit to what you're saying, too, and you're reading something, you know, and then later you see something different and, you know, I think whether we withheld it, I don't know if it's withheld, withheld it, or were we ready for it? I think to be ready for it is a better question. I think this is spiritual growth.

Can I understand everything about it when I'm a baby in Christ? That's drinking from a fire hose. five years ago, seven years ago, may not have been able to understand. But today, where I'm at spiritually, I understand it. So whether we withheld it or just I wasn't ready to see it, you know, the Holy Spirit wasn't able to reveal it to me in a way that I could synthesize it at that point.

Yeah, you know what else about that that I'm experiencing, because I'm now a little older, is that, you know, if you are If you have a real interest in, like, engineering, there comes a time that, well, I don't have to pursue that so hard anymore. Well, God's Word's not like that.

The more you know, the more you want to know. And it just, even as you grow older, you know, even if the Lord doesn't have you teaching or anything, you can't, you can't get enough. You're learning stuff all the time and your experiences and what the Lord has you involved in, but you just can't get enough. God's Word just never gets stale.

I think that happens when you finally turn from all the self-efforts to seeing Christ. Good point. You know, I think, you know, in my own life 20 years of, you know, being Brethren and all this and missing all these things and looking, you know, at all the different things until really, personally, the focus is to know Him.

Changes everything. Yeah. But the Lord let me go through all that for a reason. And he allowed me to do that and got me to a point where I could open my eyes and see these truths. And then it changes everything once you stop looking at yourself and start looking at Christ. Yeah.

You ever wonder how you can instill that in somebody else? doesn't this exactly who we're studying no and and he's taking everybody through a different path yeah yeah that's it's not a cookie cutter that everybody sure you know goes down the same path everybody has different experiences different things and it gets you to a point where you know and and there are millions and billions who are just going to be in the nursery for the year yeah and then don't you find don't you find that you going down that road the end of that road is is fairly consistent with every believer. It's a greater intimacy with Christ.

So that's a goal that's reachable. How you get there can be a thousand different ways. And I think our job is just to walk beside people. That's really what our job is, and to tell them, no matter what the circumstances are, You know, I know what's at the end of the road. I know where we're going. I think it's rightly dividing a word. Yeah. I think that's the key.

I think a lot of these individuals who are being kept in the nursery are just not being, you know, taught correctly, you know, what the word shows. And, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, Myself including get to a point and you're wondering why I keep beating my head on the wall Why am I doing that sure and you know, he's taking me to that point where you know, then exposes me to these trees And I think a lot of people go through that same thing. I keep trying to keep trying to keep trying to keep trying it I'm not getting anywhere. Yeah, I know and you know, everybody's individual, you know in that process No, but you know and why he does it the way he does it.

I can't question it. I You know, because he's God, obviously, but he has a wisdom and a care for each one of us individually. The goal is the same. The goal is to be conformed to Christ. The methodology is different for everybody. You agree with that? I mean, it's not different in the sense that the hallmarks along the way are the same. I may be more stubborn, I may be, you know, I may have desires over here, over here, over here, that, you know, it's got to detach me from them, so that Christ begins to become really important to me.

You mentioned getting to the end of the road, or knowing the end of the road, right? That's important. You know where we're headed. What about when we get to the end of our rope? That's what you're talking about is that we all get to the end of our rope, different things in our life. Where do you go when you're at the end of your rope? Where do you go?

Good question. I'll tell you my answer. Every time I've been at the end of the rope, so to speak, the Lord has always had somebody there. Every time. where they just sat with me or sent me something in the mail or maybe it was just something I saw in his word. That there was somebody or him there. I wasn't left hanging.

Yeah, I think I'm being mechanical a little bit, so I apologize. of what I was saying is that we all get to the end of our rope, and where we fall is right back into God's Word. Because we haven't understood something that's likely true of us that we don't believe yet. So there you are at the end of your rope, you fall right back into His Word, because likely you had deviated from the truth that was there in the first place. Yeah, this is my brain going in 80 different directions, which is always dangerous, is the, I guess, the end point.

The end point for everybody is the same. It doesn't matter whether you're a baby in Christ or you're a teacher and following along all this. The end point is still the same. We're in Christ. The odd part is that I don't understand is, you know, I think it's words he's He's training us or directing us, you know, and why does it is this for eternity were? but You know, are we different than you know, somebody else in Christ who? Is a baby Christ or somebody who is spiritually more along the path? I don't I mean, it's kind of a No, it's a terror question or crazy that can't be answered. But you know what he takes us through and you know, we it's not. Again, the end point's the same. You're in Christ. Christ is your life. Sure, it's it. Sure. But is it? What is the training for us?

For somebody whose spirit's immature versus somebody who's not? And you kind of, after a while, you start to sort of look for the spirit's work. One of the things you look for is a hungry heart. And if one of those shows up on the horizon, then it's very clear where you direct your efforts. And it isn't, come over here and I'll open your mouth, and I'm going to shove all this stuff in your mouth. No, it's I'm going to walk with you, because somebody walked with me. And they saw that I was hungry. One of the early guys that was beside me when I was getting to one of those points, He said something one day that made so much sense to me.

He said, you know, you hang on to the rope. We're afraid to let go because when we do, we're going to fall. And it's going to be really hurting when you hit the bottom. He said, but after a while, when you run out of strength and you let go, you find out the floor was this far under your feet. I thought, oh, that sounds safe.

You know? That the Lord doesn't hang you out over the cliff, but he might be this far off the floor. Well, that really made sense to me. You know? And what did it make sense about? I could trust what God was doing. From my perspective, I'm holding on to that rope as hard as I can. From his perspective, he's just saying, well, look, go. I got you. I got this.

You know? And there are, like hungry hearts are important. The other thing that you notice is people, believers are hot and cold, not cold, hot and cold. And you know that because you're hot and cold, hot and cold. You know what? We're going to finish this lesson today. Question six, last question.

Define biblical inspiration. What does, what does write-up say it is? He says inspiration speaks of divine authorship and perfection of the Word. He says that godly persons will hardly agree with what has been said as to inspiration and infallibility, and yet they will often overlook what lies at the very basis of inspiration the purpose of the Spirit of God. But how sad it is to see these faithful ones ignorant of the purpose of God in giving us the Scripture. So he says, the question is to find inspiration, but the real question is, what does a faithful one One's ignorant of the purpose of God in giving the Scripture. Why did he give us the Scripture?

I mean, why do we have to? I'd go back to the thought that it's to know Him. I think that's the right answer. I think that's exactly the right answer. The reason I bring that up is because, I mean, amongst certain, you know, friends of a Reformed persuasion, you know, biblical authority, you know, divine inspiration is a big deal to them.

But it's this totally cold, sterile, intellectual kind of a knowledge of inspiration. Sure. No knowledge of God, really. Yeah, I think that's right, and especially limited knowledge of the personality and characteristics of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Himself.

Why did He do what He did? Because He loves us. That's right. Well, what's that like? It's in His Word. Yeah. How do I find out that God so loved the world, or He loved me personally? How do I find that? I find it out in the Word. I think, like Courtney says, I have to be told that in God's word you'll find his love, and in particular you'll find him.

And the cool thing about finding him are all those attributes that belong to him, that who he is. And then you discover, oh, he wants me, he's at work to make me just like him. That's what he's doing. I was listening to this testimony of a YouTuber, multi-millionaire of a kid. He goes through this whole scenario. I had everything. I didn't have money at a young age. There wasn't really any material thing that wasn't within grasp, so to speak. But he said that he was deeply empty.

He had sick, I don't know how many millions and millions and millions of viewers, and as an influencer, he had control and power in all these ways, and he set out, of course, to get me. And he had an intense desire, for whatever reason, probably lived all his life to figure out who Jesus was. So he started reading the word and got to know him. And then it goes on, of course, and the result there was that he fell in love with Jesus. But I thought it was interesting because it does tie back to the fact that you have to be told that's the job of evangelism.

But if evangelism doesn't introduce you to that person through his word, then you can grow in the dark for a long time. Because just knowing what the Bible says and stopping at that point, realizing that this is a relationship that you're entering into, and then you have a fellowship for the rest of your life.

And that changes the game for kids A to Z, and even for myself, just hearing that. It doesn't matter what's going on in the world. People can still come to know the word Jesus. What we would say is, well, that's crazy. You're going to make millions and millions of dollars being a YouTube influencer.

Sure. Well, that relates to that generation, and at the end of the day, it's the exact same thing that we relate to, because that happened to us. That's exactly right. Especially if you come to Christ a little older. That's happened to me. The guy I went to college with and was in Religion 101 with, Took me to lunch and asked, he said, do you know Jesus Christ? I said, well, sure I do. We were in class together about him. He said, no, you don't. Glad he said it that way. Can I tell one quick story? Yeah.

There was a guy, he ended up being a general, but he was a really brilliant guy, really an achiever. So to make a long story short, he got straight A's in high school, straight A's in everything. He was basically a genius. He was wanting just to be somebody and he was a jet fighter pilot, an experimental jet fighter.

He kept saying, I have this emptiness in me. And so I heard about the astronauts, and he joined the astronauts. It was the hardest thing he ever did. He was standing on the moon looking at the Earth and said, what am I going to do to fill this void? He did beer, and taxes, and then more millions of dollars. And then he got a Bible, a similar old destiny, and read like one page, he got saved. That's cool.

No more stories from you, buddy. That's what I felt when I read the card from the Church of All Your Signatures and Roger Bonney handed it to me. So sorry. That was a lot of tape editing there. I mean there are a lot of people that have that story that God allows them to succeed and then when they succeeded they wondered why they were so thirsty and so hungry and so empty.

Right. You know, I've relayed this around when I was at CH Plum Hill and the Greenwood Village police came in and were telling us about all the kids who were in trouble. And she said they have everything. Everything. You gotta close. Thank you, Father, for your word. We so, so appreciate it. We so appreciate the fact that your word is way more than just words on a page. And thank you for the drawing of the Holy Spirit as he takes that word and reveals the intimacy and person of the Father. of His precious name, Amen.