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Well, let's open our Bibles to
Galatians chapter 5. Now, to tune you in to where
we are, we are going through, we've gone through the doctrine,
now we're going through the duty part. I've gone through the theory
of discipleship, you know, spiritual exercises for spiritual health
and fitness, but now I'm showing you how to apply it. And the
setting for this, and I can't remember if I said it here last
week when I was speaking up at the Bible Institute, but in my
youth pastor days, for five years I was a youth pastor, you wouldn't
have caught me very long up on this platform. I mean, I preached
in the aisles, and you know what? It's much more effective when
you're talking about a point and you turn right there and
look at someone, and you're standing three feet away from them. I
mean, they really pay attention, but that's not my goal. My goal
this morning is for you to think about sitting on the other side
of a table with your favorite, you know, morning beverage, you
know, coffee or tea or whatever, and with your Bible open to Galatians
5, and I've got mine open, and I'm going through another lesson
of discipleship. And discipleship is huge. in
the scriptures, God says there's an unfading crown for those who
are shepherding, nurturing the flock of Jesus Christ. Now, primarily,
that crown goes to the elders, because they're the first line
of those who are in charge of shepherding the flock. But I
really believe, because of other scriptures, that anybody that
truly nurtures others, that have come to Christ and helped them
to kind of get really grounded and growing and connected and
not driven with every wind and storm and wave, that there is
an unfading crown. In fact, Daniel says, those that
turn many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever. And I believe that God attaches
in a special reward on those who lead people to Christ and
those who nurture people to Christ. So to give you an opportunity
to get into that deeper or to start into that, I'm doing a
group session, but it's like a one-on-one. So here's the goal.
We're looking at the Spirit of God. Now remember, we've already
gone through salvation. And if you remember, I went through
the 22 different times the gospel was presented in the book of
Acts. And we looked at how you can't just pray one prayer, that
it's actually not a set of words, but a relationship that begins.
And then that relationship issues into being fed by the scriptures
and I talked about reading the Bible and the effect of the scriptures
and and how tied it is to salvation it's engrafted into our souls,
but now we're looking at what is so central to every part of
our spiritual lives, and that's the Spirit of God. And so, I
have a session, and so if you were sitting with me at my favorite
vitamin C place, I would say, this morning we're gonna talk
about meeting the Spirit of God. Now, I don't mean for the first
time, because discipleship is only for believers. By the way,
when I cover salvation, many times over the years, As I've
covered that, the person I'm discipling gets saved. Because
they say, you know what, I'm not sure that what you just described
has ever happened to me. I say, well, why don't we just
do this? Why don't we renew all of those
commitments to Christ that you made at salvation and make sure
that you really are connected? And they go, yeah, I really like
that. Many of them are completely different people. It's they knew
all about the Lord, they just never had connected. They're
kind of like the 18 inch rule. They knew about him in their head,
but they'd never received him in their heart. And a lot of
people are going to miss heaven by 18 inches. They know all the
facts, but they don't know the person. And there's not a relationship
there. So we go through salvation. That,
remember the evidence of salvation is, as newborn babes we desire
the sincere milk of the word. You can tell if the person has
been born again and become a new living spiritual creature by
where there's an appetite for the Word of God. And we go through
that, but then I say, all the rest of your life is tied right
here. The Spirit of God. So I want you to meet the Holy
Spirit, and what is it we're looking at? He's the one who
empowers us and transforms my life. If we are born again, we
are connected to the power source, And that power source, the Holy
Spirit of God, is changing us. We're empowered to deny ungodliness,
and we're transformed. In fact, the Holy Spirit, do
you know what his primary role is we're going to see this morning?
He is the one that does the personality transplants. Most of us, Our
personality we were born with, it's called the works of the
flesh, manifests itself in very awful ways. Anger and wrath and
outbursts and dissensions and jealousy and strife and malice. That's how we were born. He transplants
into us the personality of Christ. And that's, it's so powerful
that in the early church, in fact, when the church was born
at Pentecost in Acts chapter two. Now I've been teaching all
week long at a Bible Institute, and so I had them repeat. You know, there are 263 first
year students at one of the last Bible Institutes left in the
United States. And I don't mean, there are many called Bible Institutes,
but a Bible Institute used to only study the Bible and evangelism
discipleship. That's missions, evangelism,
discipleship. You know, you couldn't get other,
you know, like music education and computer and stuff. It was
just purely a Bible Institute. There are fewer and fewer of
them left, and I was at one of them. In fact, I saw our three
students, you know, Aaliyah and Ethan and Hannah, that were there. We have 1% of the freshman class
up there at Word of Life. But I was teaching them, and
I said to them, I said, Where was the church born? This is
your quiz. Acts chapter 2. So now I'll give you a quiz.
When you want to know about the birth of the church and day of
Pentecost, what chapter do you look at? Very good. Now, do you know what you just
did? You increased your capacity to remember when you see and
hear and say each one is an exponential increase in retention of things. And so, in Acts 2, the church
was born at Pentecost, and when the church was born at Pentecost,
what happened is all of the former barriers and divisions and strife
that characterize normal people were broken down. Now you say,
where'd you get that? Well, have you ever noticed at
the end of most of Paul's epistles, like in Romans 16, and you know,
in Philippians 4, and in Colossians 4, and I mean, you can pick them
up in other spots, but there are these little lists of names,
quite a few names. If you ever take the time to
study those names, you'll find out that in one breath, Paul
talks about a new family grouping of people where there are people
of every ethnic background, of every socioeconomic strata, of
former very separate types of people. People that, you know,
we have that in America. There's a whole group of people
that don't ever do what we do. They don't fly through the airport
where all that Ebola is. They have private, chartered
jets. Now remember, one time, I've
told you all my stories, I went with someone like that. My roommate,
when I was going to college, he introduced himself. I said,
I'm from Texas. I said, great, tell me about Texas. Oh, he says,
we have a ranch. I said, how big is it? He says, 10,000 acres.
I said, what do you grow? He says, oil rigs. I visited. They had 10,000 acres of pumpers. And he was from a dynasty, you
know, kind of like all the television series about that. Wild money
flowing. And he said, how would you like
to go on a trip the way we travel? And I said, okay, you know, as
long as we don't do anything God doesn't approve of. He said,
oh, no, no. And when we flew, We were brought to the loading
dock when we got off. We came in a car, we left in
a car. None of this dragging stuff through, you know, the
airport. I never touched my bags. They
were put in, they were taken out. They were taken to the room,
they were opened in the room. Well, we went to see the opening
of Annie to show, in London, no less. We came to the back
of the theater. They opened the door for us.
There was no money, tickets. They ushered us into our box.
The normal people were out there. You could just kind of see them
moving in the darkness. We were in this box. And I mean, it was
like Annie was in our box with us. She was right in front of
us, you know, and you never had contact with commoners. The restaurants
we ate in, there were no prices on the menu. My friend said,
if you need to ask the price, you can't afford it. See, that
kind of lifestyle breeds something. Remember I told you a while back,
Bonnie and I were, we were 12 rows separate on an airplane
crossing the ocean and so they had sorrow for us and they moved
us up and they moved us up into the, not just first class, they
put us in the nose of the airplane up where there's a table and
the people are all sitting around it. It's really different up
there. Someone from in the back behind the curtain came up and
used our bathroom and I looked at him. Get out of, this is our bathroom,
you know, up here in the front with us. See, that breeds, and
you get like that, and you don't like people. Did you know the
early church at Pentecost, you had Roman senators next to slaves. That's as far as you could get
in culture. and they were called brother
and sister, and they greeted one another with a holy kiss.
There was no prejudice. There was no separation of socioeconomic,
you know, race, whatever. It was all marvelously transformed
in Acts 2 by the power of the Spirit. You read there's 19 different
nations represented, and these people were transformed. Well,
after we go through that, what I emphasize is, that this is
how you know that you have made connection to Christ. Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is passing
away. The new has come. And salvation
is not me joining something, not me saying something, not
me affirming something. It's me becoming the dwelling
place of the infinite God of the universe, who transforms
me by His Spirit. I become, and you become, the
very dwelling place of God. And that changes us. That transforms us. And that's
what happened at Pentecost. And did you know, us sitting
here this morning, every born-again believer sitting here this morning,
all of us collectively are a continuation of what began on the day of Pentecost. God moved in, broke down all
the racial barriers and all the hatred and all the kind of pompous,
you know, you don't belong in my part of the airplane lifestyles
of the first century church, and made the people one. And
that's what he continues to do. That's what's so amazing about
being in Christ. And so, as I'm sitting at the
table, I remind them. Think about what happened on
Pentecost. God's Spirit was washing clean sin-stained hearts. The
people at Pentecost, now who was at the day of Pentecost?
They were all religious people. Everybody at Pentecost had come
to the feast in Jerusalem. The majority of them traveled
at great expense. They came three times a year.
These were huge events. They were very religious. They
were very sacrificial, and they were devoted to their religion.
The only thing is, they had sin-stained hearts, and no amount of religion
can take care of that. You can push it away and try
not to think about it, You can ignore it and try and hope that
your good outweighs the bad, but only God's Spirit can wash
clean sin-stained hearts. That's what he did at Pentecost.
That's why there was this, everybody on the day of Pentecost that
entered the church had the same experience. They were joyfully
talking to each other and saying, I'm forgiven, I'm forgiven, I'm
forgiven, I'm forgiven. All my sins, Jesus Christ, the
one that died on the cross is the one that, and that all was
prompted. by the Spirit of God entering
them and empowering them to know that God had washed them clean.
The washing of regeneration, you know, Titus 3-5. God's Spirit
breathed life into sin-darkened souls. Did you know that everybody
that you live next to, that you work next to, that you go to
school with, and that you're related to, that's not a believer,
has a sin-darkened soul. That's why all day long you can
say, that is not tissue. That is a living—abortion is
killing a conceived-by-God human being. And they go, no, no, no,
it's tissue, it's tissue. Don't get—don't politicize this.
See, they don't understand that God said life begins at conception. They don't understand that. Why?
They have a sin-darkened soul. The light of truth doesn't penetrate
very far. And so, that's why we have to
be so careful. We cannot force those people
to live righteously. We can only expose them to the
truth and ask God's Spirit to breathe life into them. See,
that's what's very dangerous about Christian political activism. We're trying to impose God's
standards on people that have totally sin-darkened souls that
will only follow those standards as long as you constrain them
to. As soon as they're loose, they go back to their lostness. And so all of the movements,
I mean, I lived through the 70s and the 80s, you know, the moral
majority and everything, and it was like a dike was built,
and as long as the believers could plug all the holes and
spend all their time doing that, they kind of kept the dike up,
but it was hopeless. Because you can't hold back sin-darkened
souls with moral rules. You can only see God's Spirit
breathe life into them, and all of a sudden their sin-darkened
souls come to life, and they go, whoa. That's wrong. I mean, you ought to hear Bonnie's
testimony sometime. I mean, my wife was led to the
Lord by reading the Gideon Bible, and when she read that, instantly,
as she fell to her knees and called the name of the Lord,
she knew that the alcohol that she lived to drink was wrong,
and nobody screamed and yelled and told her, stop drinking.
The Spirit of God in her heart bore witness. She knew what the
righteousness of God was, because the Spirit of God works within
us when he transforms us. Also, here's what everybody that
we live around and go to school with and work with, they have
empty, hopeless lives. That's why, do you know what
the newest big industry is in Silicon Valley? Read the news,
read Bloomberg, read New York Times. Do you know what is the
fastest growing segment of industry in Silicon Valley? It's prostitution. Because those mega millionaires
and billionaires have everything and they're just trying to get
more of the things they want the most. And I mean, we're even
having prostitutes murdering Google executives because they're
charging $1,000 an hour and they don't want to pay, they only
want to pay $900. And it's unbelievable. And you say, what's all that
about? Everybody is born with an empty, hopeless life. And
they fill it with something. Alcohol, sex, money. Western
Michigan, there are a lot of empty, helpless souls that are
filling that ache, earning money. They still have the first dime
they made and everyone in between, and that's what keeps them going.
And if they didn't have the money, they would be empty and hopeless
again. And that's what God's Spirit can fill and make us Not
empty and hopeless. Do you know what your true wealth
is? If you lost everything, it's what you still had left. What
cannot be taken away by a flash crash in the market, or by a
downturn, or by an extended depression, or deflation. That's the new
thing that's happening. Deflation. What do you have no
one can take away from you? It's what God's Spirit does.
And that's what he did on Pentecost. He took sin-stained, sin-darkened,
empty, hopeless lives, and he took barren lives. I mean, people
that had nothing redeemed in their lives, nothing that would
last forever. Everything was going to burn
up. They were barren. And he turned them into literal
spiritual gardens that were just bearing the fruit. So that's,
and you know what? As I sit across the table, I
say, do you remember when your sin-stained heart got cleaned?
In fact, do you know what tonight is? I've had more people ask
me about tonight's service. I don't know what, I didn't,
I mean, I read my bulletin, but I didn't, since I wrote it, I
don't know what I said wrong. But tonight is, we're having
communion, and I'm doing a discipleship on why we celebrate communion.
How we do it. What the steps are in 1 Corinthians
11. It's just the, what biblical communion is all about. How you
have to look back at the cross. How you have to look up at Christ
and his coming. And then how you, the Lord said
we're supposed to look within. And when we look within, we're
not supposed to just say, wow, it looks pretty nice in there. We're
supposed to purge anything out that displeases the Lord. That's
what God is doing. And so discipleship is you say,
hey, Do you remember when your sin-stained heart got clean?
Do you remember when your sin-darkened soul, the breath of life of God
came in? Yeah, I just taught membership
class yesterday. In fact, it was so much fun.
I stopped early yesterday morning at my favorite vitamin C dispensary,
and as I was standing there in line, they says, boy, you're
pretty chipper early this morning. It was the Water Street vitamin
C dispensary that I was at. And the person behind the counter
says, boy, you look pretty chipper this morning. What are you heading
off to? I says, oh, I'm going to a member class. all of the
workers. Member in what? I said, oh, it's
just a group of people that are joining. You know, I was playing
along with it, you know. And they, I mean, they were so
curious. They said, well, how long does it last? I says, oh,
it goes all day long. It's over six hours long. They
went. membership in what? I mean, they
were starting to get interested in joining something. I mean,
because they like it when it's something that's, you know, it's
like climbing a mountain, you know, and I says, oh yeah, I
said, it's a church membership. And it was so sweet. One of the
workers said, who would go six hours to classes to join a church? And That gave me an opportunity
to say, people that have empty, hopeless lives, and that were
sin-darkened souls, you know what was really interesting?
One of the workers, you know, what happens is, the more spiritual
you get, they peel off. One of them said, where is this
place that a room full of people would sit for six hours to join
in? And I said, well, it's the one that's over between Stadium
and Main. Oh, that one. You know, it's interesting, he
was a college kid, and I guess that maybe a lot of college kids
live around us. We said, oh, that church. I said,
yep, that's the place where God's Spirit is filling empty, hopeless
lives, and God's Spirit is transforming barren lives into spiritual gardens.
And so, we need to understand the Holy Spirit. And what I do
right now, as I'm sitting across, I usually have a little piece
of paper. that I'm writing on, or depending on the person, I
can already have it written out. And I have on that these references. And what I do is I just take
them, and if you want, if you've never done this, you can open
your Bible to Genesis 1-2. We're coming back to Galatians,
but I'm going to project it on the screen. And I say, look at
Genesis chapter one, and they can all find that. You always
start with something they can find. I say, it's in the front right after
the index, you know? And they go right there. And I said, look
at this. It says, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters. I said, did you know that it's
the Holy Spirit that was the agent of creation? The Holy Spirit
is the one that, I know that God created the heavens and the
earth, and Jesus Christ, all things were made by him, without
him was not anything made. But the agent, the actual hands-on
fashioner, The agent. What we find is the operative
force, the member of the Trinity that does stuff is the Holy Spirit. And he does it for the glory
of God and to point to Christ. But he is the person who is the
agent of creation. If you keep going, he's also
the agent of conviction. My spirit will not always strive,
God said. God didn't say I'm striving.
He says my spirit is striving. And so what you show as your
discipling is how utterly vital the Holy Spirit's work is. He
is the one that was the one who created all things. That's why
when in Exodus chapter 20, the Holy Spirit says, I created the
earth in six literal 24-hour days, just like you're supposed
to work, six literal days. Sun up to sun down. Evening in
the morning, you know, that whole solar thing. He said, just like
I created the universe that way and rested the seventh, you work
that way and rest the seventh. Everybody in the 14th century
BC was a creationist. A literal, a maximalist. We have so many terms nowadays.
They were all six-dayers. Because the agent of creation
Explained it and he was the only one that was there Carl Sagan
wasn't there The Spirit of God was and he wrote down what he
did That's what's so interesting we trust other people more than
the Spirit of God, who wrote down the truth of God. And so
you explain, he's the one that convicts people, and just like
with my vitamin C people yesterday, I go no further if the Spirit
of God is not working on the other side. If he is not inside
them, making them curious, convicted, wanting to know more, interested
in understanding how to be saved, you don't, we can't save people. I can't, you can't. and no quick
prayer, and no, we can't do the work of regeneration. The Holy
Spirit does. He's also the author of scriptures. It says in 2 Samuel 23, 2, David
said, the Spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was
in my tongue. And I even have them mark that in their Bibles.
That's one of the key verses about inspiration. Holy men of
old didn't speak whatever they wanted to. They were moved, Peter
said, by the Holy Spirit. This is David saying that the
Spirit of God, he's the author of the Scriptures, and when I
read the Bible, it's God's voice. He spoke by me. That's why when Daniel read his
Bible in Daniel 9, do you know what he said? He said, we haven't
listened to your prophets. He looked at reading the Bible
as listening to the prophets tell what God wanted. You know
what one of the evidences of salvation is? We want to hear
God's voice. We can't go very long without
hearing his voice. We long to hear his voice and
so we, Plan to neglect other things so we can. In fact, when I was being mentored
and trained by Dr. MacArthur in the 80s, he said,
there's something you need to learn if you're going to succeed
in the ministry. Plan to neglect. He said, my goal in life is I
plan to neglect everything except what God called me to do and
to be responsible for. And he said, I surround myself
with people that are better than me at everything they do so I
can do what I was called to do. Did you know we need to plan
to neglect whatever it takes to hear the voice of God? Because
he is the one that speaks through his spirit writing down the scriptures. So then I take him on. I mean,
John 16, 13, the spirit of God is the one who reveals Jesus.
He won't speak of himself, he'll speak of me. He'll show you things
to come. It's the spirit of God. When
we read the Bible, the Holy Spirit is hoping and desiring and working
to make us see Christ, not himself. See, there's a little problem
with this new movement of fixation on the spirit. You know what
the Bible says? He won't speak of himself, he'll speak of me.
said. The focus of the Holy Spirit
is not to focus on the Holy Spirit, but to put the spotlight on Christ. The Holy Spirit is in the background,
energizing the agent of creation, the one who caused the inspiration,
the scriptures, the one who regenerates hearts, but the focus is on Christ,
to the glory of God the Father. And so he's the one who reveals
Jesus, and when you read the Bible, If you invite him, he
reveals Jesus. Did you know I'm testing that
right now? Do you know who I'm reading in the Bible? I'm reading in the
Bible where it talks about the ophal and the call and the liver
and separating and this mold and the blood and the issues
of blood and the scabs and you know where I am? Leviticus. Do you know what? If you ask,
The Spirit of God will reveal Jesus in any part of the scriptures
because Jesus said in Luke 24, all the Bible talks about me.
You can get a blessing out of any page of the Bible if you
invite the Holy Spirit to reveal. In fact, usually if it's very,
very hard to understand, you know there's something about
Christ in there because he is the theme of the whole book. And the Spirit of God is the
one who secures us. See, the reason why a lot of
people don't feel saved, they don't feel secure in their salvation,
either they're not or they are not living in such a way that
the Spirit of God can make them feel His ministry. You know why? We're going to see that next
time, Lord willing. He gets grieved and quenched.
The Spirit of God is a person. He gets grieved and quenched
by our behavior. Because he lives inside of us.
It's kind of like having someone living in the back bedroom of
your house that you refuse to acknowledge is there, other than
now and then. And they start feeling like,
you don't want me here. You know? And when the Holy Spirit
is grieved and quenched, we don't feel secure. We don't have the
joy of our salvation when he's grieved and quenched. And he
is the one that, as it says in 2 Corinthians 1.22. Now, he is
the down payment. He is the engagement ring of
our salvation. He's the one that sealed us.
and keeps us from Satan being able to enter and to deceive
and to come in and corrupt us. He seals us. We're kept by the
Spirit of God. And also it's the Spirit of God
who makes us brand new. Titus 3, 5 says, not by works
of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy,
he saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing
of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is every day
resetting us. I mean, I have an iPhone 4, and
I think they're on 6 now, and probably there's one in the works
beyond that. And mine is getting old and tired. And you know what? It regularly gets mixed up and
shuts off, or spins. And I have to hold down the power
button until it goes to sleep. Then I wake it back up with the
power button, and it kind of fixes itself. It needs to be
reset. we regularly need to invite the
Spirit of God to make us brand new, to reset us to the original
settings, to hunger after Him, to long, because we love Him,
not to grieve and quench Him, and to surrender. In fact, we'll
see in just a moment that our lives are kind of like if this
platform was a plot of ground. The Holy Spirit In any part of
our life that He is given access to by us surrendering, He plants
something that grows. And you know what that's called?
The fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit flourishes
in any part of our life that we have given up and over and
surrendered to Him. That's what he wants to do. He
makes us brand new. He takes that thorny, stony,
fallow ground and he brings forth life. It's a byproduct of our
salvation. It's the Spirit of God who cleanses
our minds. Now let's turn there. I don't know where you guys,
probably still in Genesis, but let's look for just a minute
at Hebrews 9 because this is where I look across the table
and I say, and primarily 99 point, well no, about 95% of the time
I disciple men. Of course, I have daughters and
a wife, so I spend a lot of time discipling ladies. But the biblical
pattern is Titus 2, women, nurture and disciple women, and Titus
2 men nurture and disciple men. And you don't have a lot of this
cross-pollination, which, you know, really protects the church.
Because when you nurture and disciple someone, you have a
growing attachment to them. And that's why women counsel
and disciple women, and men counsel and disciple men. And that is
vital. Of course, though, now with all
of our sexual disorientation, you know, everything is dangerous
nowadays. not if you're in the Spirit. And this is what it says.
Turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 9.14. I actually have them mark
this. And what I say is, this is vital for you to know because
the Spirit is the one who cleanses our minds. What is our mind?
Our mind is our connection to the spirit world. Our mind is
like Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi opens up an unseen world
and we can see things out there that we couldn't see without
it, and it opens to us the ability to get things from this unseen
world that we need or want and send things to the unseen world.
What is all that? That's all that interface between
the physical world here, where we live, you know, this world
of weather and pain and needing to pay bills, the physical world,
And the spiritual world is connected with our mind. The mind is the
interface to the spirit world. That's why we're supposed to
guard our minds. We're supposed to wear the helmet of salvation.
That protects our minds. So, it's the Spirit of God, the
one who already has sealed us, who keeps our minds clean. You know, Bonnie and I just flew
back, I told you I was teaching at Bible Institute, and we had
about four flights, and I don't know if she noticed, but I noticed,
unusually, how many people didn't touch anything in the airplanes. And they'd sit down in their
seat. Now comes the white piece. And they're wiping everything
off, you know, these, you know, the antibacterial things, you
know. And they're using paper to open doors. I mean, it's just
like the whole country is just all a little on edge about, you
know, how close is close and who has it. And now they're trapped
on the cruise boat. I guess the boat got back and
the 4,000 are released. But you know what I mean? It's
just, we're so aware of some pathogens. God says, if you allow into your
mind, what does the verse say? How much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, offered himself without
spot to God? Hebrews 9.14, are you reading
it? Do you see what it says? It's talking about the three
persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And it says, how much more shall
the blood of Christ, the Son, who through the eternal spirit
offered himself without spot to God? The Holy Spirit took
the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and offered it to the Father. What does it say, the rest of
the verse? To purge your consciences from things that lead to death.
What is that? Did you know that just as much
as, you know, I read an interesting study this week, a company was
hired in Manhattan. by the corporation, and everybody
knew it was going to happen, they just didn't know when. But
they were hired to infect an entire office building with a
virus. Now, it was a harmless virus
that doesn't make anything bad happen. There are harmless viruses. And they came in when no one
knew, and they only put the virus on the doors entering into the
building. And everybody came in the way
they always come in, and some came in, touched the door, and
touched the coffee pot handle. You know, those people, before
they even worked, they gotta start the coffee. Other people
went right from the doors to the restrooms. And there were
people like that. It's like, they come to work to go to the
bathroom, you know? So, okay. And so they picked it up on the
handles and took it into the bathroom. The others picked it
up and took it into the break room. Others went right to work.
at their keyboards, but as they were sitting at their keyboards,
about 16 times an hour, we as humans do this. About every four minutes, we're
touching a port of entry into our body. And so, before the
end of the day, everyone in the office was infected. Now, it
was harmless, and nobody died, and they didn't even have a runny
nose. But they tested the blood. It was willing, they got paid,
and it was fun. But what they found is, if we are not vigilant,
we get infected. You know what the Bible says?
Whatever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report,
let those things into your mind. That's Philippians 4.8. Do you
know what it says? Whenever we are not doing what
is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, and
thinking on those things, we're infecting our minds, just like
the office building in Manhattan. And we're getting a virus that
grieves and quenches the Spirit of God. And when he's grieved
and quenched, the Bible doesn't make any sense. We can't tell
where we're going. It's kind of like, you know,
having your windshield fog up instantly, you know, and you
can't see anything or having a huge rainstorm where the wipers
can't keep up and you have to immediately slow down and start
pulling over. You don't know where you are.
Did you know when we get infected, The things that aren't true and
aren't honest and aren't just and aren't pure and aren't lovely and aren't
of good report, it fogs the window. We can't see where we're going
spiritually. We can't hear the voice of God. We don't feel like
we're related to Him anymore. And so, the Holy Spirit is the
one whom we pull over and say, I don't feel close to you, I
can't understand the Bible, I don't even want to pray, I feel far
away, I don't even feel saved. Hebrews 9.14, how much more shall
the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, offered himself
without spot to God, that's a past event right here, that was A.D. 30 that that took place. But
it says he, today, can purge your minds, your consciences,
from anything that's a pathogen that leads to death. And then,
by the way, you know what the twin verse is? If you write in
your Bible, you ought to put a little arrow. The twin verse
to this is Hebrews 10, 22. And it says, let us draw near
with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our minds sprinkled
and our bodies washed with pure water, which is the word of God.
And so what it says is that no matter how far away from the
Lord, it's only one step back as we invite him to cleanse our
minds and we can draw near to him again in full assurance that
we're welcomed. And that's all a work of the
Holy Spirit. Every bit of that. And he does
that in our life when we give him access. You know, it's kind
of like yesterday, we're trying to transfer a big file between
me and one of my children. And they said, oh, dad, you know,
this and that. And I said, well, why don't you
just open up? You know, let me connect to your computer. I'll
just pull it across. Oh, yeah, fine. Did you know that's what
the Lord is saying? Just open up. I'd like to come
in and cleanse that part of your life. I'd like to come and plant
the fruit of the Spirit in that part, in that part, in that part,
in that part. I just wanna, I wanna work inside of you. The Spirit
of God is the one who calls us homeward to heaven, and that's
why assurance of salvation, that's how the Bible ends. The Spirit
and the bride say come. Let him that is a thirst say
come, and drink of the water of life freely. So, after we
go through that, I talk about the work of the Holy Spirit.
And I say that the work of the Holy Spirit is, he is in the
life-altering, personality-changing business. Those are the things
that the Spirit of God does if he enters us. And it's almost
time to go, so I'll give you a preview. If you come back for
coffee next week, and the Lord doesn't return, and we're still
alive, and all of the Ebola gets, you know, stymied, This is the text we open to. And they are patiently, usually
sitting there on the coffee table, waiting for me to get there.
Some people, once they open, they never move, you know? And
when I finally say, look at Galatians 5, they get so excited, and I
say, look at this. The works of the flesh, Galatians 5, 19
to 21, that's how we were born. That's our original settings.
That's the original operating system of our lives. And this
is what happens. The longer we live in the flesh,
adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery,
hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions,
dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, and revelries,
and the like. That's 17 manifestations of the
flesh. This is the majority text, or
it's called the Western or the Byzantine text. Now, this is
a great opportunity. I'm not teaching about this this
morning, but I will for a moment. These two are from the Eastern
text, or the Minority, or the Alexandrian and that whole thing. It's the Eastern text. This is
called the Critical text. New American, English Standard,
NIV, original NIV before they started doing all the neutering
and everything of it, and the Muslim-friendly, and the homosexual-friendly,
and the feminist-friendly versions, which the NIV, you know, is owned
by Fox Broadcasting, and they're purely for profit, and if they
can make the Bible say what you want, they'll do it. The new
NIVs, you know that. It's just the direction publishing's
going. But forget all that because I
don't want to tie that in with this. The English Standard and
the New American follow the Eastern Minority Alexandrian Critical
Text. What that means is the rule is that it's better, according
to them, if it's older and shorter. That's the two rules. The older
the text is and the shorter it is, they think it's better. And that's fine. And by the way,
that's the direction Christendom's going. But let me show you where
Christendom's been and why I'm an old fogey and I stay over
on this side. Not because I believe this is
the Bible and that's not. For this reason, simple church
history lesson. If you measure the sermons, the
actual recorded sermons, of century two through century six plus
of the early church, okay? So we're talking about old church
fathers, anti-Nicene fathers and post-Nicene fathers and all
of that, post-apostolic literature. After John is gone in Patmos
from the second century onward, there are thousands of sermons
that are extant. That means they're still out
there. There are copies of them here and there. And scientists
have taken those sermons and analyzed them and looked at the
verses. It's like, do you know how many
verses I've either quoted or printed? And these were transcribed
sermons that people out in the audience wrote down. And they've
looked at all those sermons and they've gauged them. And what
they found out is that two thirds of the sermons The person preaching
was reading from group A of manuscripts, and one-third of the pastors
were reading from group B. You can tell what Bible they
were reading from, what version, just like you could with me.
Now look at this. The two-thirds is here. Two-thirds of all recorded sermons,
well, it's 60, I don't know, 3%, of all existing sermons from
the first six centuries of the church are from the majority
Western Byzantine text. One-third are from here. Both were Christians. Both were
the Bible. What's the difference? I'll show
you on this page. Right here, the only differences between
the two manuscripts are these two words. You see those two
words? That's the 17 works of flesh.
They only have 15 on this side. You notice that there is no adultery
here, which would have been right there, and there's no murder. It would have been right there.
And is that a huge difference? No, adultery and murder show
up in many other places. And so there's really not a concern.
But I prefer, just my own personal preference, to side with the
pastors of the first six centuries that went this direction. But
that's the works of the flesh. Next time we come back, we're
gonna look at this, the fruit of the Spirit. See, when the
Spirit of God moves into my life, he alters my personality. I stop
being driven and dominated by the flesh, and I don't have envy
and outbursts of wrath and jealousies and immorality and carousings
and orgies. Instead, I love the Lord so much,
and his presence fills me so much, I start changing. I start acting like Christ. That's why the early believers
began to be called in Acts 11 Christ ones, Christians. And
when we come back next time, we will look at how the fruit
of the Spirit shows up in our relationship with God. We have
an absence of selfishness. We have a release from our circumstances. We have an internal serenity. Then the Spirit of God spills
over into our lives and starts changing the way we treat other
people. And what shows up in our lives
is that we have a long-suffering patience. We don't get irritated
at the actions of others. And they look at us, and they
go, you're not gonna do anything? Go, mm-mm. They go, what's wrong
with you? They say, Spirit of God, or I'd
punch you. You know, on and on. And finally, we'll see in our
private life, and all of that, and let me get to the end, because
it's time to go. You know, I really get spoiled when I travel because,
especially when I'm overseas, they don't have clocks over there.
They just say, go as long as you want. I said, are you serious?
They say, yeah, go. Okay, we need the Spirit's power
to follow God. We can't follow God this week.
You can't follow the Lord in anything you've heard, whatever
part you remember, without the Holy Spirit. Secondly, we need
the Spirit's power or we grieve God. God's looking at the field
of our life and he sees all the patches we are not giving to
him that grieves him. And we need the Spirit of God
to constantly renew us. So, this is how we're gonna end.
It's 1146, let's all stand. And what I'd like you to do,
three weeks ago or so, our group, we were up in Jerusalem on Mount
Zion in the upper room and we read all the scriptures outside
and we marched inside and it was remarkably empty. We were
the only group up there. And I said, hey, let's just do
the day of Pentecost and let's pray and sing this song. And
while we were singing it, the police ran in with whistles.
And I thought, was there a riot outside? I said, sing a little
louder. You know, I thought they were dealing with someone else, not
us. On our second time through, our guide went over to see the
policeman blowing the whistle while we were singing. And the
policeman said, The Moslems and the Orthodox Jews are offended
when you Christians sing loudly or at all up here in the upper
room. So you may not sing up here.
And you know what our guide said? You're the last group that got
to sing. Because now, we came in the back
door. In the front door, they say you
may not sing or pray loudly in the upper room. It offends the
Moslems and the Orthodox that are all around. What we were
doing up there is what we need to do before we go. Did you know
you can't have love, joy, and peace without the Holy Spirit
of God? And he only plants in places we surrender to him. we
surrender, he moves in. This song, and I hope many of
you know it, Spirit of the Living God, Fall Fresh on Me, Melt Me,
Mold Me, Fill Me, Use Me, is an invitation. And you can either
sing it to get it over with because you want to go to lunch, Or you
can make it an invitation and say, I need love in this part
of my life. I need patience here. I need
your gentleness at work. You know, it's just, you can
apply it any way, or he can apply it any way you allow him to,
okay? Let's just bow before the Lord
and sing this as our prayer before we go. Spirit of the living God,
fall fresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall
fresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use
me, Spirit of the And Father, you've heard our
prayer, and I pray in Jesus' name that you would find access
to more and more of our lives today and every day that we invite
you in. In the precious name of Jesus,
we pray. And all God's people said, Amen. God bless you as you go.
ESH-29 - Discipleship Lesson 5 - The Spirit Of God - Our Spirit-Empowered Lives Aboun
Series Biblical Exercises for Spiritu
| Sermon ID | 99625151744210 |
| Duration | 50:54 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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