Person & Work of the Holy Spirit

This class is the person and work of the Holy Spirit, in case you didn't know. And we have about finished up lesson five. I think we have a couple of questions to go. And I think we've gotten down to question nine. Question eight was what then is new birth? What are the characteristics of regeneration? And we talked about that. And then question nine is, is the new birth the impartation of a sinless nature?

You have a choice of two answers. Yes or no. How many think yes it is? How many think no it isn't? What a bunch of chickens. All of these people over here, none of them raised their hand. I used to teach in front of a blackboard, I'd put the chicken coop up there and I'd write the number of chickens that were in there. So, let me ask this again. How many think that the new birth is the impartation of a sinless nature? How many think it isn't? How many think it isn't? How many are too afraid to raise their hand? So, the impartation of a new nature.

If you look at 1 John 3.9, John says, whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, for his seed remains in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God. So that means that all of us in this room are exemptions to this rule. Right? Because you all have sinned. Trust me, I know you have. God is the author of new birth. So if, well let's go back to this.

What is a nature? How would you define a nature? It's the way you naturally are. That's pretty good. It's the way a thing functions or operates. I like to use my dog, Zeke. Zeke is a chocolate lab. You know what? He's got the nature of a dog. No one had to teach him to bark. He knew how to do that. It came with the nature. And no thumbs. He's got no thumbs. No thumbs. He uses his nose a lot. He does a lot of other things that dogs do that I don't want to mention. He's a great dog.

But notice a nature isn't something that has to be taught or acquired. It comes with the territory. The nature of a sinner is to sin. Go back in the nursery at 10 o'clock with Donna. and watch these little toddlers. As far as I can tell, none of their parents have sent these kids to sinning academy. It comes with them. Nature is a way a thing functions or operates.

If God is going to impart to you, according to one John, his seed remains in him and he can't sin because he is born of God, then this new nature that we all get is sinless. That's a pretty bold statement, how can I get by with saying that? Because the nature comes from God himself and it's the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, question, as a believer with this sinless nature, how do you explain the fact that you do commit sins? Oh, we've got another nature floating around in there, right? The old man. The old sin nature. So really what's got to happen is for you as a believer, you have to submit yourself to the nature of the old man in order to sin.

Or if you get, put it another way, if you're up in the James class, they'd be teaching you about temptation. And temptation is designed to woo you out of your position in Christ so that you will operate and function out of Adam. Now, there's never a time, there's never a minute when you're functioning out of Adam that you're not sinning. Now you may not be committing crimes, but you're sinning. Why? It's our nature. Yeah, that's the answer. It's Adam's nature to sin. Paul said, whatever is not of faith is sin. Oh, wow. I don't have to drive him in a car listening to country and western music. Am I sinning? Yeah, maybe. Or listening to Russ Limbaugh. Am I sinning?

Yeah. Next going. Well, that's too good for Sarah Palin. The Holy Spirit is opposed to the flesh and the flesh to the Holy Spirit, because then you are either with one or the other. Right. Right. And I guess it's a good thing the Holy Spirit is only with the spirit, because then we would just be. doing the old stuff. That's right. That's exactly right. So I think God is the author of new birth, right? And so if he's the author of new birth, then he can't be the author of sin. Can't be. So your new nature as positioned in Christ can't sin. Impossible.

So what's the secret? To try harder? Well, if you give up, then that sounds like you're sort of in neutral. And trust me, if you're in neutral, you're an Adam. Well, you're not in neutral if you turn it over to God. That's a big deal. No, no. That's effort.

Turning something over to God is not walking in the Spirit. That's an old Catholic idea that I'll give it up to the Lord. Give what up to Him? Do you think God wants No, he doesn't. He put it on the cross and he crucified. What's that? I'm not talking about giving the old nature to God. I'm talking about giving your current life to God. Okay, what do you mean by giving it to him? Let him run it. Okay. How? By faith. It's the word yield.

Yeah, we present, we yield, and we're intelligent believers, we recognize that we have this new resurrected life in Christ that is sinless, that functions. It has a nature, it is a nature, and it functions through us if we just let it by faith. I've been pondering that thought you're explaining there, and I'm trying to think Do all of us who are believers have a new nature that is independent from the Spirit of God who lives within us? Good question. Does everybody hear the question? No. I'm just thinking, I'm wondering if this new nature is something when we're born again we get a new nature that the Holy Spirit lives within or is it really the Holy Spirit himself? And we don't really have our own new nature, but it's the spirit of God living in something.

I'm not sure what it is. Now, it's a good question. We for those of you who weren't here on Friday night, we've talked. We know who the real Christians are, right? Because we keep track of them. Here's the thing, we went through John 17 on Friday night, and the interesting thing is that the Lord Jesus Christ prayed to the Father, Father that they may be one as we are one, that they may be one in us.

The oneness is a oneness of life. Each one of us has a resurrected life of Christ. It's a oneness with Him. Along with that life is the nature. And the Spirit of God, according to Romans 8.2, is the principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. So you don't get the nature and the life without Him. They all come together. So you and I are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit includes of the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus, which is the new nature, sinless. You don't get one without the other.

It isn't something that, well, let's see, I've got a couple of new natures, I'll spread them out. No, this oneness thing is a whole new concept in Christ. and it's a spiritual oneness, a oneness in focus, in life, in intent, in purpose, and it's all generated by the Spirit of God. Wouldn't God put a vessel, a new vessel within us that the Holy Spirit can dwell? Yeah.

Man is made up of soul, of spirit, soul, and body. When you were conceived by your parents, you were a spirit that was dead to God, a soul that was infected with the sin nature, and you had a body that was dying, even though you were little. So, when you're born again, what gets born again? What gets born anew?

Your spirit does. And the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in your spirit. You are now spiritually alive to God. And the spirit of God, who is God himself, has now taken up residence. That's why Paul talks about your body as being a temple. Well, I was going to say that when you start having your eyes on God, on Christ, you get transformed and it automatically changes you because you're now looking at Christ instead of looking at the world and the more you're into the word and the book then the more you're involved in it and so therefore you get transformed because you just change.

Your spirit becomes alive to God, isn't dropped by the Holy Spirit. Guess what? Your soul doesn't know. Your soul was infected by the sin nature. But this transaction happened in which you were crucified with Christ and so the control of the sin nature over your soul was cut off. Now your soul is, for the first time in its existence, free. But it has this thing called a will. And it can will to submit itself to either the new life or the old life. So Monique is right. What happens is that the conformity to the image of Christ is a soulless operation, not necessarily a spiritual one.

Because your spirit is already complete, that's your position. Your soul is the thing, and why is the soul so important? Because it is the faculty through which you manifest your personality and your character. So as you behold the glory of the Lord Jesus in the word of God, what happens? your soul becomes conformed and transformed into the image of Christ. The life of Christ, the resurrected Christ that's in your spirit begins to live through your soul. And what is your soul doing?

It's believing. It's learning and believing. Beholding. Is that clear? Here we are told that as born of God we have a nature sinless and incapable of sinning. The soul is born of God. The divine seed is permanent. It's incapable of being corrupted. Thank the Lord for that. New birth then is the impartation of a sin nature. Sinless? Somebody was awake.

Question 10, what isn't new birth? Not believing, not accepting. How about asking Jesus into your heart, is that new birth? No, it can't be. How about making a commitment to Christ, is that new birth? I think it depends on the person. How about water baptism? I think you have to believe that Christ is who he is and that he sacrificed himself, the perfect and only possible sacrifice for you. And if you accept it totally, you're saved. What if I only accept 80% of it?

Yeah, you know, that's what I was thinking. All of that doesn't seem to come like right away. It's just really a recognition that, it's a recognition that what you're, I think, what you're doing on your own isn't it. And you're recognizing that there is a that there's a God, that there's a power and then it seems like a lot of the stuff comes afterwards. It's like a learning process. There's that.

The issue is only one issue. It's what is the gospel and how do I respond to the gospel. The gospel is real simple. Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins. He was buried and he was resurrected and he was seen by many. He died on that cross to pay the penalty for the sins of the whole world.

Do I believe that or not? That's not the same thing as asking Jesus into my heart. It's not the same thing as making a commitment to Christ. It is not the same thing as being water baptized. Salvation is by grace through faith. It's not of yourself. It's a gift of God. It's by faith in the facts and the person of Christ alone.

This asking Jesus into your heart is a bunch of nonsense. Although I think it's tough to make black and white statements like that because for some people that could be the way the Holy Spirit leads them into it. I would want to bet my salvation on how firm my asking Jesus into my heart was. There's an excellent paper put out by Duluth Bible Church, there's only seven reasons left to answer Jesus into your heart. Okay, so can you say, could you please fill me with the Holy Spirit?

If being born again is accomplished by my believing in the person and work of Christ, period, if I add anything to it, or take anything away from it, it's not salvation. It's real simple. Salvation is a very simple, easy thing and we have complicated it with all of these other soulish, warm, fuzzy, feely, crappy things that are nothing to do with salvation. Nothing. It's belief in the gospel and the person of Christ. That's all it is. It's nothing more than that.

And if you add more to it, you know what you've done? You've inserted yourself into the grace message thinking you had something to do with your own salvation. I'm the one that received Jesus into my heart. Really, that's awful big of you. Okay, but what do you do then if you are kind of less than Luke 1 in thinking about God? And then so what do you do? You do what you mentioned five minutes ago. You spend time in His Word.

It seems to me a matter of what's motivating what. Okay. If you take a step back and look at what the work of Christ is on the cross and resurrection, That's his work, and the result of his work is resulting in salvation through belief. When you step back and you look at this, and I have nothing to do with it, and so it's not a matter of, okay, now I'm going to accept it. It's just a matter of looking at it and realizing that it is a work that was completed and done. I believe it, or I don't believe it. So that seems to be the crux right there. And then you had nothing to do with it. It's not based on you at all, whatsoever. Anywhere in the picture. Yeah.

When the guys were trying to lead me to Christ, the one guy kept saying to me, why don't you give your life to Christ? And I kept saying, he doesn't want me. He doesn't want my old Adamic life. And I wasn't even a believer and I could understand that much. What does he want from me? He wants to regenerate me. New birth is not just receiving Christ. Regeneration is a transaction.

It's a lot more than just changing your mind about something. Or saying some words or whatever it is. It's a heart change that's tough to explain. When you look at that, you can almost get on a treadmill. First of all, you believe. And then the next step you say is, okay, now maybe I better go forward. And then maybe I better ask him into my heart. And that's what men want you to start doing. And you start doing one thing after another and you get on this treadmill. What did the thief on the cross do? Yeah, he did all kinds of spiritual push-ups to go to paradise, didn't he?

It goes back to what faith is, the non-meritorious. There's nothing in ourselves. That's why he set it up by faith. And it's the importance of what you believe. The truth and the facts, the veracity of what you believe is the important part. Ours is just by simple faith, which is non-meritorious.

There's no effort. If there's anything that we have to do, That cheapens everything. It's either God is a debtor or he didn't do enough and we have to do something. So it comes down to simple faith, which is that the one thing that there's no credit for, there's no effort, there's nothing. But it's the veracity or the facts that are the important part. That's right. It's really important to get that. And you know why it's so important to get it that way?

Because your entire Christian life will be based on that same principle. that God reveals grace to you and what do you do with the grace that's been revealed to you? You believe it. And I think he reveals the facts to you too. All the time. So you're cruising along and now you're pretty sure about being saved and then he announces to you in Romans 6 that you were crucified with Christ. What do you do with that information?

You believe it. I don't remember that Is it blasphemy to sit there and say that I need to do anything? I wouldn't call it blasphemy, but what it does is it gets a person away from the real issue. The real issue is so simple. It's the person and work of Christ and do you believe it or not. That's all it is. Anything other than that is self-promoted salad dressing.

If you're presented the gospel clearly at the beginning, you don't have to get there. If you get it clearly at the beginning, I've got a book coming, it really is for missionaries but I've decided you guys are all a good mission field so I want you all to read it. It's from a new tribes group and a mission they did in Papua New Guinea and how simple the gospel message was given to these people and they ripped it away from these missionaries. They couldn't wait to get it. and it was real clear and real simple and they started in Genesis. It's really neat. So the book's coming, we'll have a quiz.

No. The last question is, is there more to regeneration than just birth? And I put Titus 3, 5-7, according to his mercy, He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. That being justified by his grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The whole point here is that your new birth is what you get, maybe is the way to say it, is a lot more than just a new nature.

This verse says that you become an heir. And that's why I wish I had remembered to print out the 34 things that happened to each one of us at the cross so that you'd know. When you believed in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, you got at least 33 things immediately from God as gifts to you for all eternity. You became a son, you became a legitimate organic offspring of the God of the universe, which is different than Adam. You became an heir and a co-heir with Christ. You became a king. Do you have a copy of that? I don't think I do. I wish I did. But I'll get them down here so that you can have them.

Whenever you're thinking like, oh gee, God hasn't done much for me lately, just pull that out and read it. What hasn't he done? There is one of those hungry hearts that says if you can go through the word of God and you can find one thing, one blessing, one heavenly blessing that God hasn't already blessed you with, then the whole thing is a lie. When he says in Ephesians that you have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly name of Christ Jesus, Did he leave one out just because you didn't get enough of receiving Jesus into your heart? You missed a few?

Come on. You are who he says you are. The problem is we don't believe him. See that? Okay. Any questions? You know, I used to wonder why people cried, you know? And your Titus 3-5, I think, spells it out. It's the washing of rebirth. Yeah. You know? So the water, the tears, that. What is the washing? What does the washing? It's the word of God that does it. And how does it do it? It does it by explaining to you what he's already accomplished.

It's not a process whereby I'm getting cleaner day by day. That would mean that the new life you have in the resurrected Christ needs some sort of improvement every day. It doesn't. The idea is to come into the fullness of what you already are, positionally. But that takes a long time. A couple of weeks. And that's the soul part, right? I was being facetious. It does. It takes the rest of your life. The soul part. So it's the spirit working on the soul. To learn who you are. Where you are and what you have takes the rest of your life.

And it may, like as a child, and I'm not talking about myself, but a child may say... How about the other Wanda? Jesus come into my heart, are you going to tell me that God doesn't hear that child speak those words? Oh yeah, you know, it's interesting. I don't think it takes a whole lot of faith to get saved. And it takes just the basic information. Where spiritual growth takes pretty precise information.

And for a five-year-old, you know, or maybe a better way to say it is, I used to be a real stickler on, like an aborted fetus couldn't be saved, or a young right out of the womb couldn't be saved. And then until Donna got pregnant with John, then I had to change my mind. So I'm reading one night, in Lewis Barry Chafer's Systematic Theology, he made a very interesting point.

He said the work of the cross was so complete that God can save anybody any way he wants. Thank you. Now that doesn't mean that I get to look for other methods. No. What it does mean is that it's God who does the saving and if he is going to deal with the 40 million souls that have been aborted in this country in the last 20 years, that's his business.

I know this, that if you go at it from a fairness standpoint, nobody deserves salvation. Nobody. Why? Because we're all conceived with sin natures, all of us. We're all conceived on the other side of the acceptance to God, even those little ones. So nobody deserves it because it has to be a grace thing. I got my money on God.

He'll do it the way it should be done. Okay the next part is chapter 2 and we're going to talk about the idea of sealing. This is with an S not a C. The Holy Spirit It does a couple of other things once you are saved. Now we are only talking to people who are saved. Ephesians 1, 13 and 14. The question is what is the unmerited thing we do when we enter into this grace. Ephesians 1, in whom you also trusted, there is the faith part.

After you have heard the word of truth, there is the informational part. that the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after you believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of his glory." So what comes first? The word of God or faith? God comes first because you have to have the information to believe.

Alright, what if we go back to little kids then who don't read? But the point is that God has to get the information to them. We don't have kids back here that can't read that are saved. Because the information was communicated to them verbally. So somehow it's communicated. There's no such thing as someone who's saved who hasn't heard the word? Correct. Faith here has come by hearing of the word of truth. The gospel of their salvation was preached and accepted and Christ was trusted in. The souls were saved, justified and accepted before God. Now, I could spend an hour answering that question but I've included in the next few questions more of the information. What is the word used to show the divine mark that a believer belongs to God.

What's that loud? Seal. Oh, seal. What's a seal? We don't use them anymore. What are they? What is a seal? Remember what they call that thing? It's called a signet. You remember how it's worked? Put a glob of hot, close an envelope right at the flap, put a little thing of hot wax and you stamp the seal on it. So nobody, if it's delivered to you and the seal's broken, you know somebody was messing with it.

So the point being, guess what? Out of nowhere comes the believers and fathomable riches in Christ. These are the 33 things. So don't leave it on, okay? You might find out some stuff about yourself you didn't know. Good housekeeping seal was the one. There you go. Which would you rather have? The Holy Spirit or the good housekeeping seal? I mean that is... Yeah, that's a good example. That's a very good example. So now, here comes your salvation. You believe in the person and work of Christ and you are saved.

Now if you are like me, you want a little guarantee. What's the guarantee? Better question, who's the guarantee? Because the guarantee is only as good as the guy who gives it to you. It's the Spirit. Sure, it's God himself. And he places himself as the person of the Holy Spirit as the personal guarantee that you are saved. If you had anything to do with it, why would he guarantee something you did? He wouldn't. The only reason he guarantees it is because he did it. Do you see that? It's real simple. I don't know why it gets so complicated. He did it all. Salvation is his deal, not mine. So if I believe and he says, OK, I think I'll seal these guys, make sure that they can't lose it, I'm the seal. Cool, huh?

So, now he gives them the Holy Spirit as promised as a seal upon the work of Christ. The Spirit comes thus upon every believer as the divine mark that they belong to God. Now we walk around in a world that's fallen and we don't get to see it, but in the spiritual realm of things, every creature in the spiritual realm sees that seal. Every one of them. That everybody in this room is sealed by the Holy Spirit unto eternity. Every one of you.

So you can tap dance all you want, you can't get rid of the seal. What's the first thing a saved soul gets? 2 Corinthians 1.22 who have also sealed us and given us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. The seal is the first thing the soul gets. It's like they shut the big iron gates and lock them and put the seal on. That's the sound. You thought it was the sound of the water going over your head. No, it's the gates closing with the seal. Bang!

The Holy Spirit is the guarantee that we now are saved and belong to God. So, if I say to you, well, you can get saved by receiving Jesus into your heart, and then two years down the road, based on this terrific life you're not living, you begin to doubt your salvation. Now if you didn't know that salvation was a grace thing, not of yourself, it was a gift of God, and you didn't know anything about this ceiling, you could have lots of doubts, right? Lots of doubts.

But doubt is not a sin. It isn't? No. How about unbelief? Well, that is. But doubt. I mean, Thomas doubted. Yeah, he did. Jesus still loved him. Don't you find it interesting that the Lord never let the weaknesses of his apostles escape the writings of the scriptures? Like my boy Peter. I love Peter. He's such a bad guy. And Abraham, he's another one of my heroes.

Question four, does Ephesians 4.30 tell us that by sinning we can grieve away the Holy Spirit?

So somebody read Ephesians 4.30. I want to see if anybody has kind of the word I'm looking for. Out loud. One of you who can read English.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Rite Out makes a point that this verse is often misquoted and misunderstood by the saints of God. It's made to teach the very opposite of what it means simply by the addition of a single word, away. That's why I wanted you to look at it. Any of your scriptures have agreed not the Holy Spirit of God away? It must have been in the old original version. And not thou into the words lest ye reprove thee and be found a liar, Proverbs. What he is saying is that by the addition in some scriptures, or some translations of this one word, the verse is made to teach that by sin one can grieve away the Holy Spirit. is embodied in verse and song by multitude.

That's totally opposite of what the truth is. And by the way, as we talk about verses that we sing, I think it's important when you sing a hymn that you read the words and understand what you're saying. If you ever sing a hymn that asks God to seal you for eternity, tear it up and throw it away. You know why? Because it's asking God to do something he's already done. You're demonstrating your ignorance and your lack of faith before God by singing such a song. There's so much that we sing, that we ask God to do, that if you understood the word of God, you'd think, well that's stupid, I'm already whatever I'm asking him to do. It's just crazy, written by people who were ignorant of the Word.

Same thing here, the Spirit abides with us forever and the verse tells us that He is the seal unto the day of redemption. When is that day? Hopefully a couple of hours from now. When is the day of redemption? When's the day of redemption? What are we talking about with redemption by the way? You guys have got all the redeemable stuff you're going to get except for one thing. Yeah, that's the day. So it's the day in which you get your new body. That's the last part that needs redeeming. The rest of you is already redeemed.

So what would the leaving from the believer by the Holy Spirit mean? Let's say he could take a hike, what would that mean? Denial of price work. Okay. With bolted vein. Yeah, that's pretty good. What else? Think about what, if this wasn't true, what would you lose? Eternity. Right off it says, sad indeed it is to grieve by bitterness or malice, that heavenly guest. But sadder far would it be. if he were to leave us. For that would mean the denial of Christ's work and our eternal undoing. I've been a believer 35 years. Trust me, I've done some things that everybody other than the Holy Spirit would have left me by now.

But he hasn't. She took about the foundational thing of identification into Christ. You know, you said earlier about the ceiling guarantees are. about, I forget how you said it, that we can't lose our salvation or anything. Ever since the identification, I can't even conceive of that because of the fact that I've been placed into Christ. I've been placed into Christ.

When could ever the Spirit leave? When could I ever get out of that? I can't. It's a new life. And my old position has been crucified. In Romans 6 I've been crucified. So now I have a new life. My new life is in Christ. There's no way I can get out of it. There's no way that the Holy Spirit can leave. the Christ or who I am in Christ. And so that there's never even a doubt of something. I can't, you know, once it's done, it's done.

My whole body has been crucified or my whole nature has been crucified positionally. And so I, you know, that ceiling is, it's a ceiling because I've been placed into Christ. You think of, I agree with you, there's no more persuasive information about the security of a believer's salvation than the identification truths. Because Romans 6 says that the Spirit of God baptized you or placed you into Christ at the time in which you died. And you died. And you were buried. And you were risen to newness of life.

Now, if that transaction took place, how do you reverse it? The only way to reverse it is if Christ reversed it. If you put the projector in reverse. and I went back into the grave, back up on the cross, and back down into my old Adamic nature. That's the only way it can change.

Well, guess what? The Word of God specifically says in more than one place that Christ is not going to ever die again. That he's risen to newness of life, and that's permanent. So if he's going back, I'm going with him. If he ain't going back, I'm sticking.

There's several people that I've known in my life that once they understood, they had a lot of doubt about their salvation because their life wasn't exactly something you put up on a Baptist billboard. And they doubted their salvation because of their behavior patterns. But when they saw and understood that they were crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ, their behavior patterns didn't matter anymore because of what the truth of God told them. Who are you? And how did you get to be who you are? And how much did you have to do with it? Nothing. Nothing.

So from there you begin to learn, well, wow, the behavior pattern comes from what I am, not my really trying hard to be something I think I ought to be. Does that make sense? Okay. Well, yeah, because then that fits that description of nature. of your just being who you are. Go back to nature. Who am I? If I've been identified with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection and seating in the heavenlies, I have a nature that's suitable to that and oh by the way, that nature functions in a way that's consistent with who it is, which is holy, righteous and good.

Kind of cool. takes care of the doubt, as you understand those, which leads to rest. Yes, it does. And you know what? The Christian life is lived from a position of rest. If you're struggling, you ain't got there yet. The Christian life is lived from a position of rest. It's Christ living his life through you, not you doing a bunch of spiritual jumping jacks so that you can look like you're keeping up. Guess what? You're not. It's him. Okay, question six.

In 2 Corinthians 5.5, how is the Holy Spirit described and what does it mean?

2 Corinthians 5.5. Now, he that has wrought in us the selfsame thing is God, who also has given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Now I love talking about this, you know why? Because I'm a realtor. And I know about earnest money. If you want to buy a house from me, bring a checkbook, because you're going to write a check called earnest money. What is earnest money? You're going to have to put a deposit down. What's a deposit?

Kind of means you're serious about it? You're holding it? Yeah, that's right. If you are kind of serious about doing this, you're coming up out of your pocket with some money. So the Holy Spirit himself money you can't get back. Well, in our day and time you can. Trust me, you can get it back. The Holy Spirit is called, as we have seen, the earnest of our inheritance. He's the earnest money. And earnest is both a pledge and a foretaste of an inheritance.

So you buy a house for $100,000. you put up $1,000 earnest money. What are you doing? You're telling the person who's selling you the house, I've got $99,000 other $1,000 just like that $1,000 that I'm going to give you at the day of closing so that I can own the house. And that's my pledge, that the first $1,000 will be just like the other $99,000.

And so I'm giving you a guarantee by giving you part of it now. I'm also giving you a pledge of the foretaste of what I'm going to do. I'm going to close and take possession. It's part payment, which being accepted was a pledge that all would be given.

In other words, if you agree to buy a property and you put earnest money up and you sign a contract, what are you doing? You're agreeing to complete the purchase. Now the Holy Spirit created this contract with believers in which he put himself up as the earnest money.

Is there going to be a closing? And how do you know there's going to be a closing? Well, when you die you go to heaven. No, how do you know? I know because I read the Word. You know because the Holy Spirit has the one who is the one giving the pledge.

He's the one who's the guarantee. He's the one who's the earnest. You know the doctrine of firstfruits in the Old Testament? That the firstfruits were an example of what the rest of them were going to be like? That's what earnest money is. It binds both the buyer and the seller, so the sealing of the Spirit binds, may we say, It binds God to fulfill his promise.

Oh, by the way, and he didn't give us 40 shekels and a lot of conversation in a written document. He gave himself as the earnest. So the write-out ends up saying, how poor such language is, and yet it shows the security of the weakest believer. How poor such language is, but it shows the security of the weakest believer. I love that. I fit into that category. What page is that? That's 27 at the top. Okay, let's close. So we got through six, right? Question six. And I've got those other handouts on the desk.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your spirit. We thank you that he teaches us all that you and your son and he are involved in the security of our salvation. That he, in fact, is the seal upon which we can rest our faith, Father. We thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.