Person & Work of the Holy Spirit
Mike Doyle · Feb 10, 2013
Holy Spirit (2013), No. 06
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926343376735

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

It's Lesson 3, still the end of Chapter 1. I think we were ending up last week around Question 10. 9 or 10, let's see. Joel's Prophecy, and somebody read that, didn't they? Yeah, we read it, and then the question was, Does the passage disprove what we've been saying about the unique character and destiny of the church?

Is it not after all identical with Israel? One of the things that we are trying to make as clear as we possibly can is the distinction between Israel and the church. And you're not going to find a lot of people that are in that camp today. So many people think that the church is just an extension of Israel, and it's not. It's a totally distinct entity. What's that look for? I don't think of where you people are. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm going to be up to date.

We're on number three. This lady did her homework. Number 3, you got number 3? I know, we want lesson 3. I haven't finished lesson 3. Do you need a 3? You guys are terrific. Not sorry, do you have 3? I do not have 3. Okay. You got a 5? A 5? I don't think I've got a 3 left. I've got a bunch of 4s. I've got a bunch of 5s too. Do you need a 3 also? Who's got a blank 3? They need 2. They need two and Helen needs one.

Here's the four. Everybody have a four at the bottom of the page is how you tell everybody who doesn't have a four. Who didn't have a four over here? And if I say he doesn't have a five, every hand is going up except for Don's, right? We won't get to five, so I'll read. Remind me at the end, or Randy at the end, and we'll pass out the fives. And notebooks, if you need notebooks, they're up here. sort of listening.

The question 9 was, and I'm actually moving to 10, was to read Joel 2.28-32 and the question was, does this passage disprove what we've been saying about the unique character and destiny of the church? Is it not after all identical with Israel? And what I'm doing, for those of you who can't keep up, The answer to this question is at the bottom of page 12 of the book. And as we go through this, I'm trying to put the pages and the paragraph numbers out so that we're kind of on the same page.

Literally. Say that again. Literally. The Joel passage has to do with And it shall come to pass that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. And also upon the servants, upon the handmaids, in those days I will pour out my Spirit. And it shall come to pass that whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said, and the remnant whom the Lord shall call.

Does this disprove the separation of Israel from the church? No. This is a passage of prophecy to the nation of Israel. A couple of reasons. One is that pouring out the Spirit on all flesh. Has he done that today? Only on this side of the room. Did you get that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we're good. Thank you. Did someone else need a three? I do. Cool. So the question 10 is what I want to get to. Does it appear that God was lingering with the Jews through the first seven chapters of Acts? Third paragraph, page 13. What do you think? Does it appear that God was lingering with the Jews through the first seven chapters of Acts?

In other words, what did he promise them if they would receive, accept, believe in Jesus as the Messiah? What did he tell them he would do? He'd bring in the kingdom, the millennial kingdom. Well, did they go for it? If they had just listened to that prophet. Yeah, if they had just listened to that prophet or if they had just believed in who Christ was, not 25 of them, the whole nation had to go for it.

And that's one of the big distinctions between the church and Israel. The church is made up of individual believers with the focus of the Holy Spirit on individuals. The nation of Israel has always dealt with corporately. as a nation. It's an important distinction.

So there were a few Jews, as disciples and a few others, 3,000 at the Day of Pentecost, but that's not the whole nation. It's important that the whole nation, and he would have brought the kingdom in, so he is, I don't want to say it this way, dragging his feet a little bit just to see if they will. See, I thought that that was before the crucifixion belief that Israel had to believe that he was the Messiah coming before he was crucified. And then, theoretically, then Rome would have come in and swept in, tried to defeat him, crucify him, and he would have resurrected and ushered in the King.

I don't know. Sounds like a silly one. Maybe it's my silly one. Yeah. Rite Out says, Alas, the nation was not ready to have him, and so the counsels of God went on to their fulfillment of the church. Had they received the truth as a nation, the prophecy of Joel would have been completely fulfilled as it was. That fulfillment for Israel remains for a future day. If you just open up the Bible, read Acts 2, and look at what Peter is saying. And get the idea out of your mind that he's talking only to the church. He's really talking to Israel.

And he's telling them that they need to repent. And repent means to change your mind. What do they need to repent about? Who Christ is. Who this Jesus of Nazareth is. It's not repent about their sins. And see that fits with what we're going to pick up with our conviction coming up. That the Spirit of God convicts the world of sin because they don't believe in Christ, not because they're a bunch of sinners. See that?

Okay. Alright. Describe some of the characteristics from Joel of what the Millennium is going to be like. He's going to outpour his Spirit on all flesh. Okay. He's going to outpour his Spirit on all flesh. What's that going to look like? Okay, and believe in the Messiah? The Jews will have the law written in their heart. The Jews that go into the Millennial Kingdom, so they won't have to study it anymore. Isn't that kind of like the... Yeah, that's part of what, I mean the Spirit of God is the one that's going to do that. Isn't this the beginning of the Millennium when he pours out his Spirit? Because everyone that enters the Millennium will be a believer. Every Jew will be. I'm not sure about all the Gentiles. What do you think? I don't know. I think the Jews will be. I think the Gentiles too, because look at the... I mean, if they're not saved during the tribulation, then they won't be interested.

That's true. That's true. Just like Noah and his family were the only believers on the earth. Yeah, that's right. Well, it's because they're the only people on the earth. I know. There will be a display of special prophetic gifts. And the other interesting thing is that there will be a judgment on all the enemies of Christ. There won't be any dancing around anymore. You see that? So, okay.

Well, he indicated there too, Mike, that it said no baptism or indwelling of the Spirit in that case. Yeah. No baptism or indwelling of the Spirit. No baptism or indwelling of the Spirit. That's a great observation because why wouldn't you have baptism at that point?

Because the Spirit is already within me. He's already poured it out. Well, let's do this. Is the outpouring of the Spirit the same thing that you and I have when we become believers? No. When the Spirit comes upon all flesh? So what's the difference between like one of these Millennial Kingdom Jews who has a law written on their heart, they don't have to teach each other, they have prophetic gifts. What's the difference between those characters and us? The Holy Spirit lives in us. The Holy Spirit is taking up residence within us. We are the temples of the Holy Spirit. It doesn't say he's going to do that with them.

And by the way, when the Holy Spirit baptizes you, what is that about? Describe how that happens. What is it? What does he do? Identify with us with Christ. Okay. Death, burial, resurrection. Doesn't he, to put it in a graphic sense, he picks you up, takes you through the cross and puts you into Christ. So now your whole identity, who you are, is now what Christ is. We're working on that with the kids in Sunday school. I thought you received the Holy Spirit after you believed, not before you believed. At the same time. Simultaneous. It's a simultaneous transaction. Because the Spirit of God, you know, we talked about that two, three weeks ago.

There's a difference between the indwelling and the filling of the Spirit. The indwelling is what He does with all believers. The filling is what He does to enable you for a ministry He's called you to. See the difference? Would you repeat that please? The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is something that every believer has. He comes to take up residence in the Spirit of Christ. You're a temple of the Holy Spirit. The filling is something he does to enable you to carry out a ministry he's called you to. So the baptism of the Holy Spirit is something every believer receives at the time that they believe. Then you wouldn't have one without the other, would you? A filling without the indwelling? Yes, you can.

Because you may not be operating right now, whatever gift he's given you, but when it's operational, he's the one that's doing it through you. I think I have the gift of teaching, so I stand in front of the mirror all day and talk to myself. Are you learning anything? She's not. So what work will the Spirit do during this time in terms of the millennial times? And I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I'll sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean. A new heart also will I give you. A new spirit will I put within you. Is that the Holy Spirit or is your spirit new?

What do you think? Come on, you chickens, answer. Be spiritually alive. Your spirit will be. Say that again. Well, since without salvation, without Christ, we're dead spiritually, the new spirit will be in a new alive spirit. It will be able to communicate with God who is a spirit. I will take away your stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. You know? It sounds like they got a much better deal than we have. Get ready, because I'm going to ask that question. What's a heart of flesh? Yeah, what is a heart of flesh, as opposed to a heart of stone?

Soft. What? Soft. Yeah, it's pliable. Soft. It can receive impressions. I think that's what it means. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. Statutes are laws. So the Jews will be able to walk in the mosaic law, and he doesn't mean once in a while, he means all the time, and it's because the Spirit of God is enabling them to do it. And they still have a sin banner. Yeah, how cool is that?

And you shall dwell in the land. And the land, by the way, if you've ever looked at the boundaries, is much bigger than what Israel is today. Those guys are really going to be upset, those Arabs in the millennial kingdom, because a lot of them are going to lose a lot of property. But there will be a new order in the millennium. A new covenant will be in operation, and its terms are the law in their hearts and the spirit given.

Can you imagine a country like Israel that is populated by people who fit this qualification. It almost seems perfect, doesn't it? The remnant of Israel will be regenerate, a holy people, blessed, a newborn nation, power for walk and order both in the individual and the country as a whole. Now, is that what we're doing? What we believers have? Sounds pretty good. I might be persuaded to go for a deal like that. Is that us?

That question goes back to Don's question. So if they have the power to have a word in their heart and the ability to obey it, but yet they have a sin nature, they still have the ability to turn against it? To sin. They do. Just like you and I do. We have the spirit of God living in us. We are recreated in Christ. We are in Christ, but we also have the sin nature in us. For us or for them? For them. You know, because there is still that choice and of course they're not going to mess it up. That's right. They still have the spirit within them. There's no contest. What's that? They still have the spirit within them and there's really no contest. Although there will be individual Jews who do commit sin. They won't be sinless. Will they ever have any hope then if they do commit sin? Will they ever have any hope? They will. How would they do that? Well, there is an end to the millennial kingdom. And then eternity is brought in and death is done away with and so is sin. So then the sin nature is removed.

You know, I really don't know the answer to that. I've spent some time looking at that. It's easy to understand what God has done with you and me as believers in terms of our identification with Christ. But there's no scripture that I can find that says the Jews get identified.

But I do know that sin will not be an issue. It will be gone. Sin meaning these guys aren't going to be secretly doing a bunch of bad stuff. It's that they will live up to the design they were created for. And they won't have any impediments to that.

So they'll be like Adam, but they won't be innocent like Adam was. That's probably a good... Did you hear what she said? No. They'll be like Adam, but they won't be innocent like Adam was innocent. They'll understand. See, they'll have life. You know, like we talked about last week that Old Testament men who believed in Christ received life.

You know, it's not the life you and I have. As nice as some of these prophecies sound in terms of the Millennial Kingdom, the whole point is that you and I, as members of the body of Christ, have a position superior to anything Israel is going to have. Okay?

Because it doesn't say, as an example, that any Jew from the nation of Israel was identified with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and that they are positioned in Christ. It doesn't say that they have a resurrected life. It doesn't say that their sons of God co-heirs with Christ.

They're heirs, but what do they get? They get the land. and you get these other prophetic things. Will they live forever? Sure, but they'll be here on the earth, in the new earth. Here's another thing. Part of the new creation. Yeah, see there's a new creation coming at the end of the millennium. We're already part of it. We're the first fruits of it. The difference, the biggest difference I think is this. Jews and the Jewish nation are an earthly group, nation. Their whole focus is the earth. They're going to have land and every blessing that they have is earthly.

How about yours? What about your blessings? Where are they? Does that make you a different kind of a creature? Totally different. We are heavenly men and women, heavenly. Because, and Paul says in Ephesians, we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

That is hugely different than what Joel says is going to happen to the Jews in the Millennium. You know, we're not from here, even though we're going to hang around here. And we're going to rule and reign with Christ in the Millennium. Who are we going to rule and reign over? The Jews! the whole earth.

To make it a little comedic, if you buy the prophecies of Israel for who you are as members of the body of Christ, you qualify yourself for spiritual handicap parking. Because you really do handicap yourself in terms of who you are, what you have, and where you are.

You know, for the fun of it, I went to listen to a rabbi over at the Jewish community center. There were about 30 people in the room. And the reason I was interested to see what Jews believe now after death. And it was amazing. There were about 30 of us, and there were only four, and I was one of them. There were five of us that believed in life after death. I said nothing, there would be nothing after that. And they have the Old Testament and I think how can they do that? It's really a pretty easy answer. Romans 9 says they're blinded. And they are blinded.

In my neighborhood we have a lot of Hasidic Jews moving in. I have a new neighbor across the street who's studied for 12 years in Jerusalem. He's a bonafide rabbi, wears one of those black suits with the fedora and all of that and we have 30 or so families in my neighborhood that go to the synagogue down the street and yet they're incredibly blind, these people. Donna said to one of the little girls, you have all those people come over your house on Wednesday night, are you having a party? Donna says, no, it's a Bible study. And the little girl said, what's a Bible?

But see, they don't call it that. They don't call it that. What do they call it? Torah or something. They have another name for it. And that's just the Old Testament. Yeah. First five books. So, and they, you know, they wear weird clothes and, and, you know, they don't do anything on the Sabbath and They don't drive up to the synagogue, but they get out the strollers, load all the kids up, and push it two miles to the synagogue.

It's not work. The women are supposed to wear head coverings, so they wear wigs. These guys are pretty tricky. I can't walk up to one of their wives and shake her hand. I can't touch her. All kinds of weird stuff like that. That's a lot like the Muslims, isn't it? Well, I mean, it's amazing when any kind of group, whether they be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever, when they enter into these ascetic practices, where they're going to deny the flesh, you know, you look at them and you think, it's not working. Explain ascetic. I know it's Jews, but... Well, there are very orthodox, strict, This group came out of Eastern Europe about in the late 1800s.

And they began to wear black suits and they wear this sort of a nock-tying deal around their waist which is reminding them of the Ten Commandments. They have to have their heads covered. The men grow beards. They really observe the Sabbath. They are very traditional and they are serious about it as opposed to normal American Jewish people like you were saying. It's cultural rather than religious.

Okay, questions? We're going back and talking about types for a little bit. Page 5, oops, it can't be page 5, or in paragraph 5, page 14. What Rideout says there is that in the 47th of Ezekiel the sanctuary has been rebuilt in prophetic view and the glory of God which left at the beginning has returned to its final resting place, chapter 13, verses 2-5.

We now see the display of the Spirit and the blessing He brings. Water issues forth from the sanctuary and runs eastward down to the Dead Sea. Water is a type of the Holy Spirit, of His life-giving activities through the Word of God. Now, some of the types are kind of a stretch to make them make sense. I happen to like this one because this is really what the Spirit of God does.

He's the one who gives life. And so to use him as water as a type of the Spirit giving life, giving life activities through the Word. How do you learn the Word of God? Who's the teacher? I thought it was Courtney. So it's the Holy Spirit, huh? Yeah, see, and through the teaching of the Spirit of God, people receive life, and he's the giver of life, and so the water is, you know, you can't have anything grow without water, and so it's a good typology.

I think it fits most of what he does. Wherever water flows, life springs up. The bitter waters are healed, the fish abound, and the very lake of death. The Gentiles receive life and blessing through the Spirit and the Word of God. The Spirit poured out from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field. All the work of the Spirit. He's the giver of life, and so water is a pretty good type of who He is.

On page 14, paragraph 5. You know what I was just thinking? It's like God the Father is like breath, like air, and Holy Spirit is like water. Well, I think that the Spirit is more like breath and air and water. And water. Yeah. Anyway. I thought the word was... The word was what? The word is water. The washing of the water with the word. What's that verse? Ephesians chapter 5. The washing of the water by the word. Isn't that the way that? The washing of the water with the word. Ephesians 5. The washing of the water with the word. Read the verse before that.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the luke. Okay. Husband's responsibility is to present his wife holy and blameless. How's he going to do that? He uses the Word of God to do it. And the Word of God is the thing that does the washing.

You're right. Good job. She gets the gold star. I do have another question. What are we going to do? I worked with some Mormon people and they studied and did things and because they think they're going to be working, that whatever they develop here, their talents or whatever, they're going to be using those talents in the millennium. What are we going to do? Are we going to live for a thousand years? We're going to live forever? We'll be working forever. She was hoping to be on vacation. Bernie said last week we'd be gasping in awe. Probably the way to go at it.

The Mormons are the 21st century Gnostics. They believe in you keep coming back and you keep getting better and you keep getting better and then you become like a god. She's right about one thing. Most of the Mormons I meet do study. They're serious. But what they study is secondary doctrine books that tell them what they believe, not the actual text. And see, Christians have that same problem sometimes. They put more faith in a book about the Bible than they do the word itself. All right, a couple of questions.

When the Millennial Kingdom starts, what's your makeup going to be in terms of who you are? Avon. You're going to have a resurrected, glorified body. You're going to have already been through the beam of judgment in which all of your life as a believer that wasn't of Christ is burned away and everything that was of Christ you've been rewarded. you have no sin nature, you have the very life of the resurrected Christ, and you have become the bride of Christ.

And so, I don't think, it's hard for us to envision, but there won't be any resistance to whatever his will is. As a matter of fact, like Vern says, you can't wait to be involved in whatever he would have you do. you won't have any issues of not having enough energy.

You know? You know I like to think of it that nothing our God has created is wasted and I like to think because it makes me feel good It helps. All the chalice like people, you know some of these Christian people are so talented with their musical abilities and everything and even the teaching and I like to think that that will not be lost but be enhanced upon in eternity. You know what I'm hoping for?

What? That when I sing it actually sounds good. You know, I sing in the shower now and it's a good thing nobody else is in the house. I've sang in church upstairs and had somebody in front of me turn around and say, excuse me, what did you say? That's how bad my voice is. You know, we'll all be able to sing.

So the issue will be, you will be a fully orbed son of God who has the very life of Christ, who you're now suitable as opposed to every other group of human being suitable to become the bride of Christ. You'll have been elevated so that you're qualified to be his bride. You will be plugged into the relationship and intimacy between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Jews don't get that, but we do. So imagine if you were plugged into that intimacy of love between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the Father wanted us to do something, we wouldn't say, I'm busy. There would be no resistance. We won't be, oh wow, I get to do that. There won't be anything like being tired. You won't have to sleep, you won't have to eat, although you can.

And the coolest part is, is that the manifestation of the glory of God will radiate out of who you are. Everybody will know. I think it's a natural tendency to want to know what we'll be doing or what will it be like and the funny thing is that we tend to think of it in a temporal context just like today.

Am I going to have a better car? Am I going to have to take it every 3,000 miles for an oil change? When that's not the context that the structure provides. I look with excitement for a new thing that we can't even grasp, not for will it be better than what I've got now.

One of the things I think we're going to be doing is that it talks about the Millennial Kingdom and that injustice will be instantly implemented. When somebody on the earth sins, It instantly is taken care of. I think we're going to be involved in that from a restoration standpoint, not from a punishment standpoint.

And if you're in Castle Rock and the Lord Jesus Christ is in Jerusalem, there will be no distance of intimacy. It will be like he's right in front of you. You won't say, oh man, next week I get to go to Jerusalem. No, no. I get to see Christ. No, no. Always. When the Lord Jesus was here on the earth and the Father was in heaven, was there any separation or distance between Him and the intimacy with the Father? None. We'll have the same thing. We'll have exactly the same thing. So location won't matter. And by the way, if you want to go to Jerusalem, just think it and you're there. And you don't have to pay any landing fees or anything.

On paragraph 5 on page 14, he discusses what does the widening and deepening of the water represent. I kind of thought it was a neat paragraph because it has to do, I think it explains a lot about spiritual growth. And as a stream flows on, it deepens. First it reaches only to the ankles. Further on the water rises to the knees and then to the loins until the mighty depths cannot be fathomed. Water is to swim in.

Thus the blessing of the Spirit widens out in the millennium until the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea." That's kind of cool, isn't it? Need we wonder that this picture furnishes the imaginary for higher blessing yet? and that the vast vision revealed to John's eye was that of a stream of water, clear as crystal, with the tree of life upon its banks, after all the earth is to be but a reflection of the glory of the heavens." What a great paragraph that is. That's why I asked the question. Lesson three. So, Randy, are you going to pick it up or do you want me to do it? I'm I'm prepared to go to go for five or ten minutes. What's that? I'm prepared to go for five or ten minutes. OK. We haven't. Let's talk about it afterward because I was I was working on four. And I mean even this morning I was working on it for hours and I still didn't ask enough of the right question.

There's a lot of content. Wow. Start talking about the conviction of the Holy Spirit and salvation. So, like you said about reading around the Bible through other books. I mean, we're reading right out, right? There's a lot of content and a lot of quotes. So it's good stuff. The point being is that there's no substitute for the word Bible. It's the primary text.

Let me explain what I was talking about with the Mormons. I offended them greatly one time when they came over to our house. I have a good grasp on how to do that. The Mormons came to my house and I talked to them about Bible interpretation and they thought it was pretty nifty that I had a system for doing that and there's a Bible interpretation class that we've done here at All Heals a few times and you can listen to it and if we do it again you can attend.

But we've got a system so that we're scientific about it. But we want every believer at Holly Hills to be able to study God's Word so that you can confidently open up God's Word and read it and know that the intention that the author had, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is this. And you know what it means and you can confidently know it. The Mormons have a King James Version of the Bible that they use that has a second column of notes from Joseph Smith that tells you what it really means.

So you don't have to read that King James Version of the Bible. You just read Joseph Smith's notes right along there and know, oh, no brain cells were involved with this. I just store away, I guess, those brain cells. Not the thinking kind, just the storing kind. So the Mormons have a system of memorization to memorize what Joseph Smith says it means. And you don't have to worry about what Paul meant.

So when Mike and I were talking about that it was simply that while we can look at secondary resources we know that the ultimate authority is God's word and we better go there first. Do they use allegory a lot? Oh they use all kinds of things. One of the problems that the Mormons have is that they have an active and living prophet. what some of the the catholics we're totally rabbit trail that's what we won't get the questions today i think we keep this up uh... the the the catholics have the pope who can when he's speaking uh... cathedra ex cathedra he's speaking the word of god today in in catholicism we don't actually that is probably but the mormons their president actually speaks with certain documents, the Word of God today that supersedes previous documents. Which is why elders come knocking at your door at 18 or however old they are. I always have to laugh because if I'm older than that guy and he's an elder, how old am I? When we talk about having secondary sources for studying, for more knowledge, but they're not authoritative like the word of God. And that's what we want to be careful of.

The other thing I would say about in context with the Holy Spirit, he does not interpret or reveal an ancillary book on the Bible. If he does, it's because the word has been quoted. And you'll notice there's a lot of scripture references in this book and we're spending a lot of time looking at those and reading them and discussing that because that's authoritative. Any other thoughts or questions on this or we'll ask the first question and maybe get through it.

Well the first question in lesson four is what does the word salvation mean? That, of course, could be an entirely loaded answer. I have the page numbers. I've written them down and I'll tell you where I'm at. I'm on page 16, paragraph 1. So it's right after the hymn. He's got a hymn before each chapter, which is kind of interesting as a person who leads music sometimes. I was like, I've never heard this hymn before, so I went and looked it up. I'm not quite prepared to leave the congregation in front of you, but I did look it up.

What does the word salvation mean? So we can quickly re-read what he's written here, but did any of you make notes or comments or answers that are outside of the book to talk about the word salvation? Being alive after death. Okay. That's a really good one. That is spiritual salvation. I think that's the one that we're most concerned with. Being saved from the lion's den for Daniel was obviously important. But that was an earthly salvation rather than an eternal salvation. I do have a correction though.

If you look in your books, and not everybody's got books, but if you look in your books, you'll see that there's a biblical reference to Philippians 1.9. It should be 1.19, I believe. Yeah, so if you want to mark that.

Yeah, Philippians 1.19. All right.

So now that we've asked if anybody had any other thoughts, The author does a good point of illustrating God's activity in salvation with the three parts of the Godhead. And I thought that was a really fantastic explanation of things. So I'm going to go ahead and read this, but let's kind of discuss them as points.

We have the Father as Savior in that it is His grace and His love that gave His Son and chose us in Him. So we have the Father involved with salvation. How many of you prior to this study, and there's nothing wrong with this by the way, but how many of you prior to this study really thought of Christ as the primary one involved with salvation? That's an easy sort of category to fall in. Okay, you know, Jesus is the one that saved me. And that's not an inaccurate statement.

But God the Father is involved with salvation by instantiating the plan and the system that we fall in with grace. What? God is involved with the process of our salvation or the system of our salvation by instantiating or creating it. It is His grace from the book and love that gave us His Son and chose us in His Son. So God the Father is involved with the salvation plan and mechanism. The Son is Savior because he laid down his life for us, accomplishing a work which has both glorified God and met our every need.

We could probably have entire classes where we discuss that sentence. Not that one specifically, but the concepts that that sentence talks about. Any questions about what the Son is involved in? I think that's probably the one we're most familiar and comfortable with, isn't it?

And then third to that, he adds, the Spirit is Savior by virtue of the work of regeneration and all that is connected with it, including the seal and assurance of salvation. And since this class is on the personal work of the Holy Spirit, let's talk about that for just a moment. What does it mean, the work of regeneration? What does that mean, to be regenerated?

To be made new. I think that's a pretty good answer there. Any other thoughts? It's not like redoing your basement. It's not refurbishing or refinishing. It is a whole new creation. To generate a new from scratch. So you're not recycling. We won't say that. Regeneration is The new birth would be another way to describe that, I think is another good term for that.

Now, because this is tied to that, you had asked earlier about, well, what's the order of salvation? And I think that's an important thing. There's an entire section of theology that discusses the order of salvation, and the Reformed folks have gone into Let's just say they've sacrificed a lot of trees and a lot of ink in the process of trying to really hammer this out. But because they didn't understand the principles of identification, and that we're immediately tied in with Christ, they had a bunch of things that they kind of strung together into a long drawn-out process so that you would know the order of salvation. But as Mike pointed out, and I think it's really an important detail for us all to understand, is that salvation, when we believe, tied us in with Christ. And with that came all of the benefits of salvation.

We don't have to wait for things and we don't have to, you know, oh, let's get our stopwatch out and let's watch this, we'll capture it on high-speed film. and we'll click, and the person believes, and then we watch it. And it comes down as this, and this, and this.

Aha! At 300 millionths of a second, that's when that happened. It's not like that. It's not an order of salvation where we break it down into tiny little steps. Although that is chronological. I hate that. But there's the before part too. There's a before and there's an after, but at the point of belief, many things become true and we become regenerate. at that point in time. It's not a process where, oh, that regeneration takes more time.

Oh, well, you believed and then the Holy Spirit first came and gave you the ability to have faith. And that whole business of stuff, which we don't subscribe to, or let me rephrase that. Go ahead, Mike. The Holy Spirit enables us to believe. He woos us. but we actually do believe. And that's the last act of the flesh, which I think is a really key detail for us to understand. But the Holy Spirit is involved, and we have all three parts of the Godhead tying in with salvation.

And at that point in time, it leads us to a whole slew of questions that are part of this chapter, and the second bell rang, and I can't even go into it. Any thoughts, questions, things you wish I had not said? Things I should not have said? Alright, let's go ahead and close in prayer. We can keep discussing after class if that is viable. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we have together to study your word and talk about the truth that you have revealed to us. We just pray that throughout the coming week as we prepare, if you are If you don't come to bring us as your bride with the rapture, we pray that the truth of what's been revealed would sink into our hearts and minds and we would meditate on the truth of your word. We thank you and praise you for this time. In Jesus name, Amen.