Well, anytime you're teaching about the Lord or God or, well, just any topic, I guess, in Christian life, it's always exciting because that's who we are and it's what we do, right? We're Christians. But having said that, I think, I don't know of a series that I am more excited about. Thanks, Richard. More excited about than this series right here on the Holy Spirit. It's really the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is really, or I should say, it can be the real game changer. Because he has such an extensive ministry and get what I'm going to say here. If we let him, we have to allow the Holy Spirit to do that. And so we'll, we'll get into that a little bit more here in a moment. But last week we started this new series. And even the title of this series, it captivates me because, Living Beyond Your Capacity. And we can scratch our head and say, wow, how could I do that? Well, the answer to that question is exactly what we're talking about. And of course it says in the subtitle here, understanding the spirit-filled life. When we allow the Holy Spirit to do what He wants to do, what He so desires to do, we could then indeed live beyond our capacity. That's exciting to me. But last week we had our first lesson in this series, and so today obviously is lesson number two. And with that in mind, well last week we said this, to begin this experience, to begin this relationship with this person of the Godhead that we call the Holy Spirit, it has to have a beginning, doesn't it? It has to start somewhere. Where is that beginning, class? Salvation. Very good student in the back there. Amen. So yeah, obviously, that's salvation. Remember last week I said this? The greatest thing that could ever happen to you. Well, firstly, it happened when you were saved, obviously, but in addition, just when you thought it could get no better, God gives His Spirit to you. to indwell you, each of us. Now that's another mind boggling thing. How could the Holy Spirit be in every single one of us and relate to us as if we're the only one? That's amazing. But that's a great thing that God's done for us. And that's the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to us. to have God, if you please, living inside of us. And so yeah, last week we understood it takes place at salvation. That's the beginning point. So today we're going to look at this now. So last week was his saving ministry. This week we're going to see his sanctifying ministry. So let's read these two passages and we'll get started. Romans chapter eight and verse number 29. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be..." I think we used this verse last week. Get this phrasing here, "...to be conformed to the image of His Son." That's the goal for us as believers, to be conformed to the image of His Son. How is that going to happen? That's what our lesson is about today. It's through the sanctifying ministry of the Holy Spirit. And then if we go back to, we'll look at the other passage, John 17. So flip back a couple books to John 17. And verse 17, John 17, 17. And here's our word that we're talking about today, sanctify. This is in Jesus' high priestly prayer. He says, sanctify them, speaking of us, believers, through thy truth, thy word is truth. And so Jesus prayed that God would sanctify his people. Well, sanctify, I guess, is a theological word. We may or may not know what that word means, and so we better start with the definition this morning. And we could talk about the doctrine of sanctification, and that could be a very lengthy discussion. But let's keep it just very simple for our lesson today. And here it says, in a general sense, sanctify means to cleanse or purify or make holy. In addition, it means to separate or set apart or a point to a holy, sacred, or religious use. And I like that one. Listen, friend, you as a believer in Jesus Christ, God wants to separate you. He wants to separate you from the world. He wants to separate you from the unclean. He wants to make you clean. He wants to set you apart for His use. And that's the goal of the Christian. Look, it doesn't do any good to get saved, to get our fire insurance policy, and then do nothing from there on for the Lord. We're here for a purpose. God has a goal for us. He wants to purify us. He wants to make us clean and holy. He wants to separate us, set us apart for His ultimate use. And when I go to heaven someday, I want to know that I did something in this life for Him. Amen? Amen. And too often, you know, the world's telling us just to look out for me, myself, and I, and it's all about us. And boy, you know what? We're here to live for the Lord. We're here to bring Him honor and glory. And so that's sanctify. And then of course, oh, I thought I was going to put the next... No, I did. I erased it. I was going to take the definition of sanctification, but it was a little lengthy, so I left it at that. Well, let's get started here. So you already see our first fill in the blank thing there. But I'm going to say something before that. No point in putting the slide back off again. I'll just leave it there. When the miracle of salvation occurred, we talked about that last week, the Holy Spirit came to indwell in your life and you, praise the Lord, were born into God's family. You became His precious, treasured child. Don't you like that? You're precious in His sight. We sing a song like that. By God's grace, He has set you apart. He has chosen you to live a life that pleases Him and honors the sacrifice of the blood of Christ on your behalf. That's quite amazing. But in a very practical sense, as our first Lesson here says, the Holy Spirit desires to make the inner work of salvation. That's what we talked about last week. He wants to make that inner work of salvation visible in your outer lifestyle and daily choices. When that begins to happen, then we begin to understand what sanctification is. We begin to see that, hey, sanctification is when God takes what happened to me on the inside and starts to work it out. Remember that verse in scripture that says, work out your own salvation. It's the bringing out so others can see what's on the inside. And that's pretty, pretty, pretty amazing. He desires to change you from the inside out and use you in his, in this life for his eternal purpose. There it is. He desires to change you from the inside out and use you in this life for His eternal purpose. Don't you like that word eternal? Does that word ever cross your mind in the week? It ought to. You ought to be thinking, you know what, I'm here to make an eternal impact. I want to do something that counts for eternity. You've heard me say it before. Now that I'm 61 or whatever, uh, how many, how many years do I have left? I wonder, you know, and it's like, okay, you know, whatever I, whatever God gives me, man, I want to make an impact. I want to do something that counts for eternity. And not just live for this world and what, uh, what this world has to offer. I want to do something for eternity. And so we're here. He, God wants to change us from the inside out and that we, he could use us in this life for, for eternal purposes. This is the essence of sanctification. Listen now. And it's the, it's God's goal for every believer, every believer. Thankfully, that when we're saved, God doesn't just leave us alone. He gives us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is there, and He enables us. And again, you've got to kind of throw that caveat in there. He's not going to force you. He is the enabler, but we have to yield to Him. But He's there to enable us. to work out or to live this everyday process of this thing we call sanctification. And the Holy Spirit is so good to be able to help us with that. After salvation, His work continues every moment of every day, transforming us more and more into the image of Jesus Christ. And that was one of our text verses we saw this morning a moment ago about being being conformed into His image. Okay, so hopefully you've got somewhat of a picture of what this big word, sanctification, the sanctifying ministry of the Holy Spirit He's here, He's in us, each of us, and His desire is, of course, the goal is to make us more like Christ, and in that process, we must yield daily to Him, and we'll get into the lesson here and other more specific things, but steering clear of the unclean, going toward the clean, trying to live a holy and a pure life so that we are fit for His use, the Master's use, here on Earth, but for eternal purposes. So let's get into our outline here. We need to keep it moving this morning. The Holy Spirit reveals our sin. In this sanctifying ministry of the Holy Spirit, what are the things that He does to help sanctify us? And the first thing is this, He reveals our sin. God's Spirit knows us better than we could possibly know us. And, uh, and, and he, and he can reveal to us things about our hearts and about our lives that we would otherwise maybe not see if it weren't for the Holy Spirit. So, so letter a, then the Holy Spirit searches the Holy Spirit searches. You see me a lot, when I teach or preach, I don't know how I got this habit, but I always yank my glasses off and talk for a while and then I'll put them back on. But I gotta tell you, when I take my glasses off, I don't really see you, I just see blurry blobs out there. Sorry to call you that kind of name, but I don't know where I picked that up, but I kind of like it actually, I take them off and hold them. Maybe I look dignified or something, I don't know. But yeah, but you know what, my glasses help me, especially reading, Like when I'm looking at the scripture now, it's just all wavy like water, it's blurry. But when I put my glasses on, guess what? Boy, it just comes into focus. And the Holy Spirit helps us in that way that He searches our hearts, and He helps to bring into focus things that we might not see otherwise. And so He searches one of His ministries, and it's to search the heart. Very familiar verse, we'll see here in a moment about that. You may be familiar with it. Let's get this one. The Holy Spirit searches the heart and reveals things we never saw before. Brother Howells used to tell a story about how he was holding someone's baby at a meeting and he had the baby on his shoulder and he was patting it and loving the baby. And then later he gave the baby back to the lady, but he was walking around the property and people were like, looking at him funny and I don't know why they just didn't go up and tell him, but he said, so finally he was in the bathroom, he looked in the mirror and he said, I had yogurt all down my shoulder. It was actually the baby spit up. And he said, thankfully that mirror showed me what I could not see. And you know, the Holy Spirit's like that. The Holy Spirit will help us to see things in our lives that we might need to deal with. And so because of that, we ought to ask the Holy Spirit daily to search our hearts and to reveal anything that might be there that would prevent us from living a sanctified and holy life. Now, keep in mind, trying to be sanctified doesn't mean we're perfect. It's a lifelong process of growing and growing and growing. beginning cleaner, pure, holy, trying to live for the Lord, getting rid of the junk, and trying to cling to the Scripture and to the good, and sanctifying. Here's the verse I was telling you about. You might be familiar with this passage. Psalm 139, David said, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. So that's a great prayer for all of us. Lord, search my heart. Search me, O God, and let me know if there's anything there that I need to deal with. And so this first ministry of the Holy Spirit is searching. Let's move on. So letter B. Not only does he search, but he convicts. That makes good sense. If he finds something and he searches and finds, then the next thing he might do is convict. In other words, inform you about it, and you need to respond to the conviction. Sometimes we see in Scripture the word reprove, and that simply means to convict or to refute or confute. and generally with a suggestion that there's shame on the individual's part, that we need to deal with it. It's to bring to light or to expose or to find fault with, but not only that, but to correct it. to go on and to correct it. Just as the Holy Spirit convicted us of our need for a Savior, His convicting work goes on every day in our hearts, of course, searching and then convicting, if there's something there that needs to be dealt with. Now, you may have never thought of it this way before, because a lot of people, when you talk about conviction, they squirm. That's not comfortable, I don't want to know about that. Tell me good things, preacher. I was thinking the other day, you know what? If I went to a church that never ever stepped on my toes, I'd be looking for another church. I don't want my toes stepped on. I want to know where I'm falling short. I want to know. I want to be preached to in such a way that challenges me and spurs me on to live the sanctified life, to get rid of the old and retain the new and move forward for Jesus. But you may never have thought of this this way, but conviction is a privilege. It is none other than the voice of the Holy Spirit compelling us to turn from sin and make our hearts right with our Heavenly Father. You know, I had somebody once tell me, he said, well, I never feel convicted. And I go, hmm, that is scary. That's dangerous grounds to be on. There's a couple of ways we could go here, and one of them's not good at all. And that would be, obviously, maybe they're not saved. But no, conviction is a good thing. And I always thought, you know, I know that God's working in me because when conviction happens, that's His Holy Spirit. As we learned last week, if I did not have the Holy Spirit, guess what? I would not be saved. And if I was not saved, I wouldn't have the Holy Spirit. So it's a good thing. Also, not only is it a privilege, conviction is a gift. It's like God's early warning system. It's the Holy Spirit warning us away from a path that would ultimately hurt us. Now, the thing is about this conviction, we must daily decide how we're going to handle the conviction. This could happen in churches every single Sunday when the message goes forth from the preacher. People can respond in one of two ways. Accept the conviction and respond to it in a favorable manner. Or, what's the other one? Reject it. That's not for me. And just push away and no. Doesn't matter how plain it is from scripture. No, that's not for me. And reject the conviction that may come. Now that's a dangerous thing. Let me warn you about that. When the Holy Spirit speaks to your heart about a matter, about an issue, you need to handle it in the right way. And when you do handle it the right way, I think, I think the Holy Spirit, even, you know, it's like, it's like the people in the dark, dark jungles of the world, you know, they, they know there's a creator because of creation. They begin responding to the little light that is there for them. And when they do, God gives them more light. Ultimately, maybe a missionary comes or whatever, so that they can hear the gospel. But they respond to the light that they have, and God gives more. And I think it's kind of like that. When I respond to the Holy Spirit in a favorable way, then He helps me even further. But this thing about how we respond to the Holy Spirit's conviction is vital. And here's the statement I want you to get. Because many Christians harden their hearts when the conviction comes. They resist the conviction. And here's the scary part. They eventually come to the place of becoming past sensitivity. What's that mean? It means they no longer feel the conviction. They've resisted it so many times that they don't even sense it anymore. That's called being calloused. It's called having your heart seared with a hot iron. And here's a good verse about that, 1 Timothy 4.2, speaking lies and hypocrisy. And then this phrase, having their conscience, which the Holy Spirit uses, seared with a hot iron. They no longer sense the conscience or the Holy Spirit dealing with them on whatever issue it is. And so that's a dangerous place to be. But every time you do respond to the Holy Spirit's conviction, you invite Him to continue working in your life, to continue transforming you into the image of Jesus Christ. And so that's a good thing. But every time you resist or reject that conviction, your heart becomes calloused and less able to hear Him. Don't go down that road. That's a dangerous one. Letter C, let's keep moving. So the Holy Spirit searches, He convicts, He teaches. He teaches. I'll show you some verses here from John, but in John 14, Jesus is about to be crucified, and He's preparing His disciples for this pending event, and He, of course, has to prepare them to continue on without Him. And he would no longer be physically with them. Well, guess what? If you were in their shoes, right? That'd be a hard thing to hear. My master, my savior telling me this, this information, I'm not going to be here anymore. I'm going to be crucified. I'm going to go back to heaven and you're going to be here by yourself, sort of. He's only giving some good news here, but, but he's preparing them for this, for this event. And it's going to be hard for them to grasp. But he tells them, look, I'm going away, but I'm going to send you the Comforter. We touched on this last week a little bit. The Comforter is another name for the Holy Spirit. So in John 14, 26, he says this about the Holy Spirit. He's called the Comforter here. And he says who it is. He says, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name. Look what he's going to do. He shall teach you all things. and bring all things to remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. So that's interesting. In a subsequent chapter then, Jesus even goes as far to say to the disciples, look, it's expedient that I do go. Because you're going to need the Holy Spirit and he's not going to come until I go. It's going to be expedient that I do go so that he can come here in John 16. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send him unto you. And then Jesus, of course, talked about the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. I'll show you one more passage here. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth. In other words, he will teach you the truth. He is the teacher. And that's an exciting ministry of the Holy Spirit there. So he is a teacher. It is his responsibility to help you understand God's Word. You've probably heard this illustration before. I have many a times. I may even have used it before myself. If you're reading a book and you're having a hard time understanding it and you're on a plane trip and you look over to your right and there's another person sitting there and you get talking with him and come to find out he's the actual author of the book you're reading, wouldn't that be amazing? What better chance to say, hey, you know what? I got your book here and I was having a hard time understanding what were you meaning right here? And you could discuss with the author of the book, what did you mean when you said this here and get insight and understanding? Well, guess what? We have this book that sometimes we may not understand it fully. We have the author living inside of us. And he's there to teach us his word. So be patient. Be diligent to study and ask the Holy Spirit, show me great things out of thy law and let him teach you. So he is the teacher. Let's move on. So number two, the only two points in this lesson, the Holy Spirit enables. So the first mission is to reveal sin, anything that's a hindrance, anything that's going to be a roadblock to the sanctification process. And then of course he does that by searching, by convicting, by teaching and so forth. Now that we've dealt with all of that, let's see how he enables us on this sanctification journey. First of all, he reminds, the Holy Spirit reminds. We saw this verse already. But we saw it for a different part. We saw it about the teaching part. Here it is again, John 14, 26. But the Comforter will come, or the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name. We talk about He will teach you all things. So He's the teacher, but look what else He does. He will bring all things to your remembrance. All things to your remembrance. Whatsoever I have said unto you. That brings to my mind a time when after Jesus resurrected, that says about the disciples and they remembered his words. Why? Because they told him, he told them that he was going to die and rise again. But, but yeah, do you ever be out witnessing and you're, you're talking and you're talking to somebody, you're witnessing to them and boy, you're, you're maybe trying to think of a verse or you're an illustration or something that's going to help in the situation you're in. And just out of nowhere, apparently it seems boom, A verse comes to your mind or the exact illustration you need and you begin to speak that to the individual. And you know later on you're looking back on that event and you think, man, where did that come from? That just seemed to, boom, pop in my head. Well, it just didn't seem to happen. That was the Holy Spirit. It had to be in there to start with. It couldn't just come from nowhere. Something you learned along the way, either from a message or some Bible reading or a book you read or something, but the Holy Spirit brought it to remembrance. And so he reminds us of things that we've learned, especially when it's spiritual matters. There was a small child, he was the star in the school play, and he got to a certain part, he was concentrating with all his might, but he wanted to get through his part and do well in the play. And he came to a certain point, he just couldn't remember his line. He couldn't remember what he was supposed to say next. Well, down in the front row of the auditorium was his mom. And she was like, she was mouthing the words. And it helped him, and he was able to help remember. And she said it several times, mouthing the words, and finally, after several times, he blurted out triumphantly, My mom is the light of the world. Boy, thank God for mom, but he didn't. He probably didn't say exactly what he should have said there. But in the same way that that mother tried to remind her son, the Holy Spirit is our heavenly reminder. He reminds us and he prompts us to remember truth and to do right. The Holy Spirit will seek to remind us to apply truth in every situation and to honor God in every daily decision. You know, it's important to apply, this is a little side note here, but apply truth in every situation. The Bible will deal with most things that we have to come up against. there will either be a plain truth or for sure a principle that we can apply. And oftentimes we're scratching our head and, oh, what am I going to do here? And try to figure it out on our own. And, you know, why don't we just say, Holy Spirit, can you help me with this? It's okay to talk to him, by the way. Holy Spirit. And I will say, I thought of it after last week's lesson. I didn't think to say it in the lesson, but I thought of it after and I should say it now. Every single day in your prayer time you should say something like, Holy Spirit, I yield myself to you right now the best I know how. That simple. Tell him he's here. Holy Spirit, right now I'm yielding myself to you the best I know how. Please control me. And when you yield, it's amazing what you can see happen. But as we face life's difficulties and challenges, He can help us, He can help us make the right decision, we just need to ask. And apply truth to every situation, that's what He helps us to do, He reminds us. All right, next page, let's keep going here. So letter B now. So not only does the Holy Spirit remind, He enlightens. This is interesting. He enlightens us, and it's good because we all have blind spots. I drive a tractor trailer and there's that infamous spot just on the right hand, just past the passenger door on the right hand side of the truck. that is the blind spot, which is why they've come up with all these fancy mirrors so you can see down the side of your truck there. But how many times I've seen a car and a truck, tractor-trailer, along the side of the road and you can tell by looking exactly what happened because the front of the car will be dented or the door, maybe the driver door or the front fenders dented and you know that the tractor-trailer was merging over and didn't see that car up the side and they made contact. The car was in his blind spot. We all have blind spots. Sometimes we can't see. the exact circumstances of what we're facing, and we just don't know what we need to know. And God has many ways of dealing with those types of limitations. One would be His Word, of course. We could seek godly counsel. That would help us to navigate situations. Or we could simply go to prayer. That always helps. But the biggie here, the one we're talking about this morning, is that we have this person living inside of us who's ready and willing and will enable us to or enlighten us to see what it is we need to see. And so that gives us this point. It is the Spirit's job to enlighten us, which means this, to reveal to us what we need to know that we didn't know before. His ministry is to show us things that everyone else misses. And you know what's interesting about that? To the casual observer, They just, they look at, if that's you, let's for instance, and the casual observer looks at you in this situation, they label it as luck. They saw that he's so lucky or she's so lucky. There's no luck. It was the Holy Spirit enlightening you to know what you needed to know in that instance. And that's one of his ministries. He's not a good luck charm. He's not some mystical power. But He's a very practical and in an unassuming way, again, He doesn't force Himself on, but He turns the light on for us. And He brings us into those aha moments. The Holy Spirit can do that. He enlightens us. Oh, what a wonderful helper, amen. I need that. I need those aha moments. I like when those happen. And, uh, I'm sure you do to let her see. So the Holy spirit reminds us, he enlightens us. He produces growth. And I think that goes without saying, and we'll just be here for a moment on this point, but obviously if we're trying to be, if we're trying to live the sanctified life, if we're trying to be becoming more and more like Christ, God's trying to sanctify us, then obviously we're growing too. Growth is happening. Well, very familiar passage here, Galatians 5, talks about the fruit of the Spirit, and it is the fruit It was exactly what we call it. The fruit of the spirit is it is the fruit of the spirit of the Holy Spirit when he's in charge I mentioned this last week when he when we're walking in the spirit. We're not going to be angry when we're walking in the spirit We're not going to be hateful when we're walking in the spirit. We won't be all cranky and stuff We're going to have his fruit when he's controlling me. I can have love I can display joy and peace and long-suffering and gentleness and That's the fruit of the Spirit. And I want to be growing so that His fruit is more and more of what I experience all the time. And guess what? If that's happening, I'm growing. You know, when I first got saved, I still Maybe I wasn't loving, or I had the joy, or I had the peace, or I wasn't patient with people and so forth. Some of those things were learned, they were developed along the way, but it was by the Holy Spirit enabling me. We're going to come to this in a second. I can't be a good Christian through self-effort. It's just not going to happen. It's not going to work. You must rely on the Holy Spirit. Too many Christians try to work it up and I can be more loving or I can be more joyful. I got to do it. I got to do it. And no, Holy Spirit, you produce that in me as I yield myself to you and you sanctify me and I begin to produce the fruit that you make that you have there for me. And so There is, this is where the personal life change produced, produced by the Holy Spirit becomes visible and evident in our lives. So it begs the question, what do you want this world to see in you? Are you different than the rest? Are you producing the fruit of the flesh or the fruit of the spirit? And and so as the world, you know, this is where you know, you may have had it happen to you someone says Something different about that person Not quite sure what it is, but there's there's something different about that guy or that girl Right. What is it? It's the Holy Spirit in you You look you it's not hard to be a light in this dark world. I You just let the Holy Spirit do his thing in your life. You exhibit, you make visible now the fruit of the spirit, and you will be like a light bulb in a dark room. Boy, everybody will be saying, hey, there's something different about that person. And you know what's good about that? That leads to opportunity to witness for Christ. Because they might say, hey, there's something different about you. Are you in the military? Are you a Christian or something? I'm glad you asked. And boy, you can have an opportunity to witness for the Lord. So let's move on. So the fruit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit desires to cultivate good qualities in your heart that show up in your life and in your relationships and in your daily walk. Okay, last point. Then the Holy Spirit produces holiness, obviously. Something we don't talk about much these days for whatever reason. I mean, it's not part of our daily vocabulary necessarily, but we ought to be thinking about it on a regular basis. God wants us to be holy. He says that he wants us to be holy for I am holy. God says, but holiness is simply this. It's purity from sin. It is a defining attribute of God. Obviously he is holy. And it's the ultimate goal, his ultimate goal, for every one of his children. He wants us to be holy. He desires for you not to be only saved from the penalty of sin, but to be pure from the presence of sin in your daily life. Ephesians 5.8, you were sometimes darkness, but now you're in the light of the Lord. Walk as children of the light. We need to hurry along here so we get done on time. The Holy Spirit will always desire to create a more holy lifestyle. That goes without saying. Obviously, he wants to create a holy lifestyle. He will guide you into right choices and relationships and away from harmful entertainment and practices. If you let him, that's exactly what he'll do. He'll want to create a more holy lifestyle. And we come to our conclusion. Too many Christians, I alluded to this a moment ago, fall into the trap of self-effort. Too many Christians I've seen, they get saved and they wanna just fit in. They try to, okay, oh, I need to dress like that. Okay, oh, I need to talk like that. Okay, oh, I gotta get a Bible like that. Okay, oh, I gotta do this and do that and do this and do that and fit in. That's not living the Christian life. It's letting the Holy Spirit change you from the inside out. And then lastly, they begin, these are the people that fall into the trap of self-effort. They begin the Christian life by faith in Christ, which is how we should continue. But then they assume the responsibility of self-change, trying to live the Christian life in their own power and effort. It just doesn't work that way. And here's a great verse in closing. Paul said to the Galatians, are you so foolish? Look, he says, you began in the spirit. You were saved by faith in the spirit. He said, are you now made perfect by the flesh? Just as you were saved by faith, Continue to walk by faith, live by faith, by the Spirit.