A Stand on Biblical Sexual Morality

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Beacon. Always building. One, two, three! Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, joined with Pastor Jim Osman.

How are you, sir? I'm doing well today. Yourself? Good, good. So, you know, many churches around this country, and really started up in Canada, spent this past Sunday preaching on the issues of Biblical sexuality, and I know that I had made the commitment to do that before John MacArthur put out that big plea for everybody to do that in unison and for folks that may not be aware of what we're talking about, just go back to the last episode where I had a pastor from Canada that came on and explained the bill that they passed up there and why the

Canadian pastors decided to make this an issue. I did go on Facebook to see, you know, were there any arrests?

Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything, so maybe, you know, I was wondering whether they were going to go after certain pastors, especially

Pastor Jim Coates and others that they already have been arresting and, you know, that made it clear they were going to be doing this.

So, still waiting to see if there's any ramifications from that. But I hear you,

Jim, you completely chickened out. You just decided, not only were you not going to do it, you decided you weren't even going to preach. You just gave up the pulpit, you know, just for someone else.

Some guy was in town. Yeah, I completely just handed that off to somebody else. Complete cowardice.

I figured it was better to just not even wade into those waters at all. I've got too much invested.

I've been doing this for 25 years. I've got too much invested to get arrested now and go to prison. Yeah. Well, let me ask this.

So, who did preach and what got preached at your pulpit this weekend? Well, our preacher preached from James Chapter 1 about pure and undefiled religion as being unstained by the world, remaining unstained by the world.

And that was the last couple of verses in James Chapter 1. It was some guy who – well, he was actually – he used to be part of our church, and then he moved away in disobedience to the clearly revealed will of God.

The Lord spoke to me and told me he shouldn't move, but he moved anyway. And he had started that series in James back before he left, a guy by the name of Justin Peters.

I think you might have heard of him. So, he was here this last Sunday. He preached, and he did mention the

C4 bill up in Canada. And, of course, I prayed at the beginning of our service. I prayed about God judging the wicked and bringing to naught their plans because, as Psalm 2 says, the nations rage in the people's plot of vain thing, but our

God sits in the heavens and he laughs at them. Yeah. And I know that we recorded my sermon, and a lot of people have been asking for it, and we will try to get that up.

The guy who does our audio video is working on that. So – and I think that it will be helpful.

You know, one of the things, Jim, I don't know if you're aware, because a lot of people think, oh, well, this is just in Canada. Yet 20 states out of the 50 have a full ban on conversion therapy for minors, and five have a partial ban.

So 25 of the 50 states have some sort of ban that says you can't convince – you cannot talk someone out of homosexuality.

You can talk them into homosexuality, but not out of it. You can talk them into this gender fluidity, but you can't talk them out of it.

You can convert them one way. You can convert them from heterosexual to homosexual. You can convert them from gender binary to gender fluid.

You can convert them into any kind of perversion, but you're just not allowed to convert them out, which shows you what the real spirit -of -the -age demonic agenda of the whole thing is.

Yeah, and the thing that's so crazy with it is that what you end up seeing is not only is it one -directional, but the thing is they're now doing stuff, trying to do it without parents' knowledge.

There was a school that got caught because they tried to do some after -school program, and I forget what the original program was supposed to be, but really what it was was to convince all the students that they're really the opposite sex.

And don't tell your parents because they shouldn't know. That's what goes on. But today what we're going to cover is the

Holy Spirit. We're continuing in our series of What Do We Believe? And if you guys want to, that are listening, want to follow along with us, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Under the About section, there is a thing of what we believe, and that is what we're going through.

Right now we're in the section under God, and we'll finish up this episode, and next episode we'll finish up the person of the

Holy Spirit. And before we get into this, this is a thing that we've seen a lot of people have misunderstandings of the person of the

Holy Spirit. And I really do believe what it is that some of the fundamentalists, and that's really my spiritual background.

When I became a Christian, I got involved in the Fundamentalist Baptist Movement. But I think a lot of them had such an aversion to charismatics that they just didn't teach on the person of the

Holy Spirit at all, just avoided the topic altogether. And I think that a lot of people do that because there's so much misinformation from one side that what you end up seeing is that the only information, unfortunately, out there is really coming from one side.

And there's a lot of confusion there. This is something I know that we've seen people try to correct.

And I think at the Strange Fire conference, and people were so upset, it was like so hateful.

Well, it's not hateful to teach the truth, right? And we understand that there's a lot of people who have confusion on the person of the

Holy Spirit because so many avoid this. Well, we don't want to avoid this. We want to be clear on what the role of the

Holy Spirit is in our lives. And we want to be clear on what he does and does not do.

Now, something that, Jim, you have made a point of saying, and so has Justin Peters, as you mentioned earlier, he makes a point of saying is that it's not really blaspheming the

Holy Spirit to question when these people say that the Holy Spirit's doing crazy things. That's not really the blasphemy.

And when they say, well, you're limiting God, and they'll say that if you limit God, that's committing blasphemy.

I think I agree with you guys that really the blasphemy is when you say God is doing something he clearly doesn't do.

Yeah, or attributing words to God that he has never spoken or even actions to God which he has never done, or attributing something as the leading of God when he is not the one who is initiating that leading, attributing false miracles, fake claims of divine healing, etc.

to God. I actually think that that is blasphemous. And attributing any work to him which defames his name.

And in the case of like the Toronto Blessings, Laughter Revival, and being glued to the floor, drunk in the

Spirit, slain in the Spirit, all those actions, I think those are blasphemous accusations against God.

So, I mean, the Charismatics are right. One of us is right, and one of us is wrong on this issue. And if what they're doing is a genuine work of the

Holy Spirit, then it is blasphemous for us to deny that work. It would be a form of grieving the Holy Spirit, and we would actually be denying work that the

Spirit of God is doing. And if he's not doing that work, then they're attributing it to him is also an act of blasphemy.

And so really what we need to do is think clearly and carefully about these issues and these works and the doctrine of the

Holy Spirit so that we're not misled into thinking that he is doing something he's not doing or not doing something that he is doing.

And, of course, Charismatics make the error that to even question that, to be skeptical, to engage the mind and want to understand this and evaluate it by the standard of Scripture, they would say that that is an act of blasphemy.

And when they are wanting you to not engage the text of Scripture and not to examine these claims and these alleged works in light of Scripture, that is your first indication that one side of this aisle does not want the light of the truth to be shined on their actions.

So we have two ways of determining is this what the Holy Spirit is actually doing. One is the Word of God, and the second is experience.

And what we want to do is look at what the Word of God says because experience can be deceiving. I had the first time, and Jim, you know my background a little, where I was involved in college in the

Charismatic movement, Word of Faith movement, and I still remember a young man who he really wanted to date this woman.

The problem was she was engaged. And so that's kind of a problem because she's not dating him if she's engaged to someone else.

And I remember us praying, and he got a word from the Lord, and it was for her to marry him, and he got it.

And I still remember talking to him afterwards, and I said, you're saying this is of the

Lord, but this is what you've been wanting. Now they did get married because she thought that was what

God wanted, and they're now divorced. I guess that must be what God wanted too. This is the problem is that what a lot of people do is they say it's of the

Lord because it sounds spiritual, and then the outcome of that is really it's their own desire that they're attributing to God.

So I want us to look at what Scripture actually says and some of the rules. So what I want to do today is we'll wrap up or look at the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. And the next episode what we're going to do is dive into really the issues that the

Charismatics bring up with the whole issue of spiritual gifts. So today let's look at the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. And Jim, if you wouldn't mind, would you read the three paragraphs that we're going to try to cover today?

Yeah, absolutely. All right, paragraph one, the work of the Holy Spirit in this age began at Pentecost when he came from the

Father as promised by Christ, John 14, 16, and 17, and 15, verse 26, to initiate and complete the building of the body of Christ, which is his church, 1

Corinthians 12, 13. The broad scope of his divine activity includes convicting the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, glorifying the

Lord Jesus Christ, and transforming believers into the image of Christ, John 16, 7 through 9,

Acts 1, 5, 2, 4, Romans 8, 28, 2 Corinthians 3, 18, and Ephesians 2, 22.

The Holy Spirit, paragraph number two, the next one, the Holy Spirit is the supernatural and sovereign agent in regeneration, baptizing all believers into the body of Christ, 1

Corinthians 12, 13. The Holy Spirit also indwells, sanctifies, instructs, empowers believers for service, and seals them unto the day of redemption,

Romans 8, 9, and 2 Corinthians 3, 6, Ephesians 1, 13. Third paragraph, the

Holy Spirit is the divine teacher who guided the apostles and prophets into all truth as they committed to writing

God's revelation, the Bible. Every believer possesses the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit from the moment of salvation, and it is the duty of all those born of the

Spirit to be filled with, controlled by the Spirit, John 16, 13, Romans 8, 9, Ephesians 5, 18, 2

Peter 1, 19 -21, and 1 John 2, 20, and verse 27. Thank you.

Now, let's start with the work of the Holy Spirit in this age, began at Pentecost when

He came from the Father as promised by Christ, and we see that promise in John 14, verses 16 -17, which says,

I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, and that He may be with you forever.

That is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see

Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.

I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. So what you end up seeing here, there's a couple of things that I want to address with this, that this kind of answers.

Now, this is the doctrinal statement of striving for eternity. So this isn't a doctrinal statement for all

Christians, but you're going to see in this a specific type of theological system that we're going to talk about known as dispensationalism because some of that comes in with the role the

Holy Spirit plays in our life and within the Church. We're seeing that the

Church, what this is going to quantify, is that the Church is separate from Israel. There is some distinction between the nation of Israel and the

Church, and that changes the function of the Holy Spirit as well. In the Old Testament, we see that the

Holy Spirit was active in Old Testament believers and maybe even unbelievers.

He indwelt them for the purpose of leadership. You see that with King Saul. The Spirit departed from Saul.

So what you end up seeing is that the Spirit could indwell somebody and leave that person.

That is different than in the Church. So a change occurred. That change, as we see in John 14 -16, that the

Helper will be with us forever. So first off, he's described as a helper. That tells us a little bit about the ministry he does.

But the other thing you notice is that this is now a difference between Old Testament and New Testament. Now, many people believe that King Saul was not a believer, and if that's the case, then what you have is the

Holy Spirit could even indwell unbelievers for the purpose of leadership. But in the Old Testament, we see that this

Holy Spirit served indwelling people for the purpose of leadership, where this is what you see in the

New Covenant. This is Jeremiah 31, 31 and following, Ezekiel 36, 25 and following.

You'll find the New Covenant that the Jewish people looked forward to. And part of the New Covenant that they looked forward to was the coming of the indwelling

Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit would indwell us and we no longer need someone to teach us

God's Word because the Holy Spirit will do that himself, and we're going to get into that in more detail. But that makes a distinction between Israel, the nation of Israel, and the

Church, and that really does have an effect on how you're going to interpret Scripture. And when we talk about this thing of dispensationalism, just understand it's not so much a theological system as much as it is a hermeneutic, how you interpret the

Bible. This is different than with covenant theology because covenant theology is hermeneutic, but it's also a theological system.

So it's a little bit broader. So it isn't really good to try to compare those two as apples to apples because they're really not, and confusion tries to come in.

And what you end up seeing is that a lot of people from a covenant theology position that try to explain dispensationalism will do it at a level where they're also talking about a systematic theology, and it's not that.

They'll often say that it's just really an end times view being premillennial, pre -tribulational, and it's not that either.

So when we talk dispensationalism, there's three elements really, what we'd call the sine qua non, the things that without it cannot be, that of dispensationalism, that make the difference between dispensationalism and covenant theology and how they're going to interpret

Scripture. The first is going to be that dispensationalism is going to see a more normal or literal interpretation of Scripture as opposed to covenant theology where you're going to have more figurative things, they're going to be looking for a spiritual meaning of things.

You have less of that with dispensationalism. It's going to be more taking the words as they appear. A second thing is, as we just mentioned, there's going to be a distinction between the nation of Israel and the church.

I'm going to get into that in a little bit after I explain these three things. The third thing is, and the reason that distinction is covenant theology is because you will see that there's two administrations of one body.

So they would say Old Testament Israel is really the Old Testament church and the church is

New Testament Israel. And they would just say it's two different functions or managements. The third element is dispensationalism would have a doxological view of Scripture.

In other words, all Scripture is for the purpose of God's glory as opposed to covenant theology which would say it's

Christological, everything points to Christ. So one example where you're going to see a difference there is when we come to a book like the

Song of Solomon, covenant theologians have to find Christ, so they're going to say this is talking about Christ and the church.

Well, that didn't happen for a thousand years, so did that book have no meaning for a thousand years? You could say they were looking forward to the

Messiah, that's possible. Whereas a doxological view, we would say this is about a godly marriage and that brings

God glory, and so we could see that. Now before, Jim, you pipe in with anything,

I just want to clarify point two in this distinction that we have between Israel and the church.

This is really the major thing that's a difference between covenant theology and dispensationalism is that how much continuity or discontinuity we have between the nation of Israel and the church.

Now the reality is everybody sees a discontinuity. Well, I can't say everyone, but most see a discontinuity and the reason is because most covenant theologians do not keep kosher, right?

So it's a simple way of realizing they see that something changed. There are certain things that don't apply to the church the same as the

Old Testament Israel. But here would be the easiest way that I've learned to talk apples to apples with Old Testament Israel and New Testament church to clarify.

When we talk about the church, and we'll get to this sometime down the road when we get to defining the church in this doctrinal statement, but when we get there, we could talk about the fact that the church, when we speak of the church, we speak of the church universal and the church local, or sometimes you may hear it be called the church invisible and the church visible.

So the visible local church is that church that gathers every week. What do we know about that church?

Well, that church, we don't really know who are the believers, so even though we call it the church, it can be populated with believers and unbelievers.

But then we talk about the invisible or universal church, and what do we see? We see a church that is only believers everywhere in the world.

We speak in those terms of the church, but then when we get to Israel, people don't use those same type of language for the nation of Israel.

And so there's a difference between nation of Israel and spiritual Israel. And it's the same that would be the visible -invisible.

National Israel would be that local or visible Israel. There's believers and unbelievers, but a subset of them, believers everywhere in the world, would be the invisible or universal

Israel. And I think that this ends up clarifying where we see a lot of passages that people try to use in covenant theology to say that not all

Israel was Israel. You have spiritual Israel, and therefore you have just a body of believers.

God wasn't really dealing with the nation when he says Israel. So you have that go on. But we have that same dynamic within the church, and I think if we view it that way, it helps to clarify that.

So we would say the church age started at Pentecost, and that's what initiated the complete building of the body of Christ as church.

So we see that distinction between Israel and the church there. Jim, any thoughts you want to add to that?

No, I think what you're mentioning there is the same thing Paul brought up in Romans 9, verse 6, when he says,

But it's not as though the word of God failed, for they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel. And he's describing that they're not all true

Israel, those who are of the faith, who achieved righteousness by faith, which would include, of course, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and Jeremiah and Isaiah, that they were the true spiritual

Israel, but there's a distinction between physical Israel and spiritual Israel. And so that's what

Paul's describing there and applying it to Israel in Romans 9. Of course, the covenant theologian would then say,

Well, see, that just shows that that similarity between Israel and the church, therefore, carries over. So Israel, therefore, is the

Old Testament church, and the church is the New Testament Israel, that these are the same body, the same entity. And so your doctrinal statement is absolutely,

I think, accurate when it says that this church began, he initiated the building and will complete the building of that church.

You have to recognize that these are two separate and distinct individuals, individual groups, because God has dealt with them in individual ways.

Obviously, God dealt with Israel as a nation. His dealings with Israel was national. It was also individual, but it was national.

And so God is dealing with the church on an individual basis, though there is a corporate entity known as the church.

So I don't know how you can make sense of the New Testament and the Old Testament without recognizing the distinction between those two groups,

Israel and the church. And the more you try and equate them, the more I think you have to take these Old Testament and New Testament passages and just cram them into your paradigm to make them fit.

And I don't think that they fit. I think that it is only a presupposition of covenant theology that would make one have to try and come up with that similarity between the two of them.

Because you have to approach it with a presupposition. And that's what we're saying. The church was initiated at Pentecost.

That was the start. So it didn't exist before. And that really is an important distinction that we're making here in our statement.

Because, like I said, there is continuity and discontinuity that everybody has. The question is how much, right?

Yeah, and if those are the same entity, if the church did not begin to exist on the day of Pentecost, if it always existed back in the

Old Testament, then what is the mystery that Paul describes in Ephesians chapter 3? He would be saying that the church is a mystery that's always been known, that's always existed, so it never actually was a mystery.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Obviously the church is something that is revealed in the plan of God that was not previously known.

That's the whole purpose of Paul calling the church a mystery. If Old Testament Israel is the Old Testament church, then the only thing you could say is a mystery is that we would now call the church instead of Israel.

Yeah, that's actually a really good point. I've never used that argument before, but I like it. Good, thank you.

It's not my argument, it's the Apostle Paul's. But it is a thing of, you know,

I think that, and I know some of our Covenant Theologian friends are going to get upset when I say this, but we have to understand where this stuff started from, and this is,

I think, a holdover from Roman Catholicism. You see a lot of groups that want to try to identify themselves as Israel.

Roman Catholicism does that. You see it with Mormonism. You see it with a lot where they want to try to say they're the chosen people.

The Hebrew Roots Movement does the same thing. Oh, big time, big time, yes. And I think that what we have to be aware of as we look at this is, and I'm not saying, you know, please, my

Covenant Theologian friends, do not throw out everything I'm saying just because, I mean, we have to understand the history of this.

I mean, the history started back there. Now, you know, I would say that when the

Reformers were evaluating things, some of it was this is how so much of it was taught. There was no other way of thinking but to think that Israel is the

Church. And we're saying something new started and that there's a discontinuity between the nation of Israel and the

Church. And that continuity helps us in understanding Scripture when we come to reading it and coming to passages like John 14 where he's saying, no, he's going to send someone new.

This is something different. There's a change now in the way the Holy Spirit is going to function between Old Testament and New Testament.

And that is really important when it comes to interpreting Scripture. So, now, are we saying that Covenant Theologians are not saved?

No, nothing like that. So, you know, Andrew, another point there is under the

Old Covenant and in the Old Covenant, people got saved or justified as they associated themselves with the national nation of Israel.

There was a circumcision. There was the adoption of all of the ceremonies and the customs and the nation itself.

It was almost like a Gentile became a Jew and associated themselves with the covenant people of God as a nation, even though justified by faith and not by any of those works,

God did call them to come in. And in order to be not cut off from the people of Israel, they would have to be circumcised or they would have to participate in the forms and functions of the national covenant.

But obviously, we recognize that that is no longer the case. In order to be justified, in order to be part of the people of God, you don't have to associate yourself as a

Jew. So how can you say then that this people, the church, with whom we are part of is this exact same identity as the nation of Israel when the means by which we are, the means by which we are, the groups with which we are associating and the way we associate with those groups is entirely different?

Correct. And I think now what we end up seeing is if there is this distinction, so what role does the

Holy Spirit play in our life today? Because if we're saying there's a distinction between the way he did things in Old Testament and now in New Testament, I already said we have the new covenant, so that's one change that we end up seeing.

But the difference that we're going to see is the role he plays in our lives now, and this is the second sentence in this paragraph here.

The broad scope of his divine activity includes convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and of judgment, glorifying the

Lord Jesus Christ, and transforming believers into the image of Christ. So there's a lot in here, and this is something that I find many

Calvinists miss something, and this is why I'm including some specific wording in here.

Because the first thing that I'm saying, the divine activity of the Holy Spirit is convicting work of the

Holy Spirit. Now I'm referring to John 16, 7 -9 here, which says, but I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you.

But if I go away, I will send him to you, and he, when he comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in me, and concerning righteousness because I go to the

Father, and you will see me no longer, and concerning judgment because of the ruler of this world has been judged.

Now when we look at that passage, the first act he's doing is the convicting work of the

Holy Spirit. And I find many that hold to doctrines of grace are referred to as Calvinism, sometimes referred to as Reformed theology.

That satirical model, the doctrine of salvation model, what we end up seeing is that many people seem to think as if the very first thing that a role that the

Holy Spirit does in a believer's life is regeneration. And that's not the case.

We see in John 16, the very first thing he does is a convicting work. He convicts the world of sin, okay?

Concerning sin because they do not believe in Christ. That's what John 16, 9 says.

So the very first act of the Holy Spirit will be to convict people, to get them to where they start to recognize their sin.

Now this is where you have people that say, well, and I think a lot of this sometimes is reactionary.

You have the people that would be more on the Minian side, they're going to say that the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, and then it's up to us to submit to it or rebel against it.

And they put that on the person. But the Holy Spirit convicting of sin doesn't mean that the

Holy Spirit doesn't bring the regeneration. Almost like that's a measure of their provenient grace, or a way that they talk about provenient grace, that that conviction and enabling work of the

Spirit of God that he does for all men to bring them to a point where they can choose and overcome the fall, overcome the effects of Adam's fall and their own depravity and sinfulness.

They would say that that convicting work is part of the provenient grace that's given to all people.

Yeah, but we should not exclude, and this is the thing, just like I'm saying we shouldn't exclude studying the personal

Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, just because many people abuse the teachings of the third person of the

Holy Trinity. We also shouldn't ignore the convicting work of the Spirit just because many people abuse that doctrine as well.

And so the Spirit convicts us of sin, of righteousness, of judgment, those three things

Scripture says he's going to convict people. And that's going to be the first act that he's going to do in a person's life.

Now, the question sometimes comes up is, can the Holy Spirit convict someone of sin who he has no intention of regenerating?

I would say yes, he convicts everyone of sin. And you know what? When they stand before God, they're going to be without excuse because they can't say, oh,

I didn't realize it was sin. No, no, the Holy Spirit convicted you of that sin. You knew it was sin, and God's going to sit there as the judge going, not only did

I know that I was the one that convicted you. So God as the judge is also the one convicting us of sin, so we have absolutely no excuse when we stand before him to say, but I didn't know it was sin.

He gives the work of the Holy Spirit is bringing that conviction and bringing that demonstration of their guilt.

He works through the conscience, he works through the natural law, he works through their own inner knowledge of the truth and understanding of the truth, which they're suppressing in unrighteousness.

He does all of that so that the sinner can be brought to see his guilt before God, and then his rejection of that truth is simply one more act that damns him.

So, I mean, if the conscience didn't do the work and the Holy Spirit didn't convict of sin, the unbeliever whom he never brings to faith in Christ, then, of course, that is a much lesser judgment that they have to face if they never actually knew it was wrong and never felt it was wrong.

If they have no conscience whatsoever, then there is nothing in this world that would deter them from doing what is wrong. But Paul's point in 1

Corinthians 2 is that the conscience accuses the unbeliever before God, and that conscience and the work of the law written on their heart is intended to show them their need for a

Savior, because that law is there. And then evangelism really is just opening up the law so that the work of the

Spirit can fan those flames, as it were, and make it more difficult for them to suppress that truth in unrighteousness so that they can see their guilt.

And your use of the law is really making them to recognize that guilt and admit that guilt, a guilt that they already feel that they're already being convicted of.

So there is a general grace that is given to all mankind in the Holy Spirit convicting them of their sin.

Mankind's rejection of that is a rejection of just another measure of God's grace and goodness. And one of the things

I'm doing here, Jim, in this is I start with the convicting work, and then I jump into that he transforms the believers into the image of Christ.

So I've left out the regeneration. I did that because I wanted to give more focus on that in the very next paragraph.

But the first step is convicting. Second, regeneration. What this then talks about is now the transforming, what we call sanctification.

And sanctification is a process that starts at regeneration and continues until the day we die, when we're glorified.

And it is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, as this says, transforming us into the image of Christ.

So day by day, we should be looking more and more like Christ. If you're not noticing that in your life, if you're 20, 30 years walking with Christ, and there's no difference today than when you first started,

I would challenge you to say maybe you're not a believer. I mean, I'm glad when

I run into people who knew me 20 years ago, and they're just like, wow, you've really grown.

That's a good thing, right? If I'm the same as I was 20 years ago, that means the

Holy Spirit's not doing something, and that's either because I'm grieving Him and I'm in sin, or I'm not a believer.

So that might be a good thing to do is to ask our spouses who've been with us for a while, have you noticed the change?

And hopefully they're not saying yes, and it's not good. But let's focus where there's a lot of discussion, that middle part that I mentioned, and that's regeneration.

Next paragraph kind of covers this. We say, the Holy Spirit is the supernatural and sovereign agent in regeneration, baptizing all believers into the body of Christ.

Now, let me just start with that. So I'm being really clear in this doctrinal statement that you, the person who claims to be a believer, you were not the agent in your regeneration.

It was not your belief or your choice or your prayer that brought about regeneration.

It is a work, a divine work of the Holy Spirit. He is the one who brings about regeneration.

And then when He does, He baptizes all believers into the body of Christ.

Now, I want to be clear with this. This is something that people get confused with, the terminology of what it means to be baptized in the

Holy Spirit. So let me do some clarifying here, just so that it's clear to people.

I'm going to use two different terminologies here. Baptism, which by the way, baptismo, which is where we get the word from, means to dip or plunge.

It means to be immersed in. And so we're immersed with the Holy Spirit. I thought it was pouring and sprinkling.

No, no. It's one of those cases. If we hadn't transliterated that word, if we had just translated that word instead of transliterated, it would have eliminated a lot of confusion about the proper mode of baptism.

Correct. And if we would have translated the word deaconos properly, we wouldn't have deacons that think they're leaders in the church.

Yeah, that's right. And this is the one thing I wished, the Legacy Standard Bible, as they came out, there's one thing

I wish they, well, two things. I wish they would have translated the word baptismo and deacon properly. That would have clarified things, but I wish they also would have clarified tongues and translated it as languages, because that was actually an issue that we see in our lifetime.

Holman Christian Standard Bible came out, and one of the things they did was they translated tongues as languages, and it made the text clear on what was being discussed, so clear that Charismatics wouldn't use that translation.

And so, you know, it clarified things, which is what we should want an

English translation to do, and what ended up happening was, well, they went back to it, so the

Christian Standard Bible doesn't do that any longer. And I was kind of upset with that.

I was like, you know, I think it was a good thing. But that is why we have that transliterated. So baptism in the

Spirit is to plunge into the Spirit, which is different than what we might refer to as the controlling of the

Spirit, and that's referred to in Scripture as being filled with the Spirit, that we'll look at in a little bit. But there is a difference.

Baptism in the Spirit is a one -time act at salvation where the Holy Spirit indwells the believer, and as we saw in John, he indwells the believer forever.

That was John 14, 16. That he will indwell that believer, and he's not going to depart.

That's different than the filling of the Spirit, which is more like the Old Testament type that we see, where the

Holy Spirit would come upon someone for leadership. So we have the filling of the Spirit is more when the Spirit is controlling someone and working through that person to bring about his activity.

And so those are two different things that many people, especially in the Charismatic circles, mix up.

And confusing those two different functions or ministries of the Holy Spirit creates confusion.

When you separate those different ministries, they become understood. So the baptism of the

Spirit is something that we see that all believers, 1 Corinthians 12, 13, we are all baptized into one

Spirit. Every believer has the indwelling Holy Spirit. That's actually the promise in Jeremiah 31,

Ezekiel 36 of the New Covenant, that the Holy Spirit would indwell us. And part of what we're going to see in the next paragraph, that purpose is to illuminate

God's Word to our understanding. That's what the New Covenant is. This is something different. In the Old Testament, people had to rely on priests and prophets to tell them

God's Word, to act as a mediator between God and man. We have no mediator between God and man but the man

Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit acts in that way. The Holy Spirit is the one who now indwells us.

We don't longer need a mediator. Jesus Christ's act on the cross, he's that mediator that bridges that gap.

And so it's very important to understand the difference between baptism of the Spirit and filling of the Spirit. And the

Holy Spirit serves in, now that he indwells us, serves in many ways. And the first thing that we have here in this next paragraph is the

Holy Spirit also indwells, sanctifies, instructs, empowers believers for service, and seals them for the

Day of Judgment. That's a lot, but that all happens at regeneration. At regeneration, the Holy Spirit will indwell the believer.

He starts that process of sanctification which continues until the day we die. He instructs us, now let me be careful with this because what some people make the mistake of saying is, well

I have the Holy Spirit so I don't need any man to teach me and therefore they don't go to church. Any person who makes that argument is not following the will of the

Holy Spirit. How do I know? Because the Holy Spirit in his Word makes it clear not to forsake the assembling together.

To submit yourselves under authority. Well, if we were to submit ourselves under authority, what do most people, and Jim, I know you've experienced this,

I know you've probably run into people that have said this, right? What are they usually saying when they say this? It's, hey,

I don't need you, I got the Holy Spirit teaching me, I'm more spiritual than you, and I don't need some man to teach me this.

And then what do they, right after that, what do they go on to do? Explain man -made doctrines that they believe. Yeah, that's right, that they've invented themselves.

And all the while that they're denying that they need men to teach them, they're denying the fact that the

Spirit of God has given men to the church to teach them. That is his divine plan. It doesn't mean that we are without human influence.

It means that God's going to use teachers in the church, but it is in the church is the function that he has for us.

But the difference is that we each can interpret the

Scripture, we can each handle the Scripture. This was a big deal when the Catholic Church and Martin Luther fought.

Because one of the arguments the Catholic Church had argued against Luther was, if you have private interpretation, in other words,

Luther's saying that I have the Holy Spirit, I'm indwelt by the Spirit, I am able to interpret God's word, and the church was saying, no, you need us to interpret for you, only we can tell you the interpretation.

And they said to Luther, if you allow for private interpretation, then you're going to have all kinds of heresies running amok.

And Martin Luther, I think, rightly said, rather have all the heresies running amok and having the truth than having only one view and it be wrong.

And so this is the thing that the Holy Spirit instructs us in his word.

We could use the word enlighten. He reveals the understanding of Scripture to us, but we have the

Spirit helping us when we submit to the Spirit, not try to run roughshod over the Spirit and tell the

Spirit what the words of Scripture means, but look for him to teach us what it means. He's also going to empower us for service, and one of the ways he empowers us for service is through spiritual gifts, and we're going to look at that all episode next episode, so tune in for that one.

So we'll hold off on that, but he empowers us for service. And one last thing I'm saying he does here is he seals us for the

Day of Redemption. Now this is important because what we're saying here is that the Holy Spirit, the moment we're saved, is going to seal us until the

Day of Redemption. Well, if that's the case, if the Holy Spirit seals us until the

Day of Redemption, can we lose that salvation? The answer would be no, and it doesn't matter.

For the people who argue you could lose your salvation, they'll say, well, God didn't take it away from you.

It's just that you kept sinning and you lost it on your own. Well, then we would have the power to break the seal of the

Holy Spirit, and I've got news for us. None of us are stronger than God. If God seals something for the

Day of Redemption, then he seals that and we are not breaking it. The whole idea of a seal is that it is only broken by the one who rightly has the right to open that seal, and that's not you and I, that's

Christ on the Day of Redemption. Any thoughts on that paragraph there, Tim? Yeah, if memory serves, that word seal is used in Ephesians 1, verse 13 as the word arabon, which describes a down payment, kind of like an engagement ring on a final purchase.

So the idea there is that God, having pledged himself to us, has given to us a seal, a token, an engagement ring, as it were, a down payment on the final purchase redemption.

And so since God is the one who has taken us to himself, he's betrothed us to himself, and since God is the one who has given us that seal, and since that seal is

God himself, that is an unbreakable seal. So none of that giving and receiving is actually on our part.

It is something that God has himself decreed is going to have happen, and he has given us the down payment, the foretaste of just a little bit of the glory that is to come to those who are his on the day of redemption.

Yeah, and if he's putting that down payment, then only he could take that back.

I mean, this is the whole thing of it. And we're saying this here because I want you to see, folks, as you're listening to this, how much of this cross -pollinates with other doctrines, and how much it affects other things.

When you view this, what I would say in a right view, right, if you have a biblical view of these things,

I think what we end up seeing is that a lot of this, it is clear, and it's not trying to fudge things.

Now, every system works, okay? You just have to understand that.

Everyone will make their system work. Jehovah's Witnesses have a system that works. They'll have an answer for things. Same with Mormons and everyone else.

They'll have an answer for things, and they'll make that work. The question is, are they trying to fit it in, or does it just come out naturally that way?

And I think that this comes out naturally. When you see the Spirit sealing us at redemption until the day of, or at regeneration until the day of our redemption, that fits with not losing our salvation.

Then you say, well, what do you do with all those people, though, Andrew, that they used to believe, but now they don't?

Well, Scripture has an answer for that, and that's 1 John 2 .19. They went out from among us because they were not of us.

They went out to expose they were never of us. They're just hypocrites that stopped pretending. That's what they were.

They were people that professed to know Christ but never possessed Christ. Yeah, and when you understand what the seal of the

Spirit is, and it's God who gives it, it's the God who is it, it's for God's redemption, for his purchase, and it doesn't rest upon us, then you can rest in your salvation.

It allows you to sleep well at night. Yeah, I remember having a guy very much against Calvinism, and he said to me, he's like, well, you know, if your kids grow up and they don't believe, you know, they become unbelievers.

I mean, how in Calvinism can you deal with that? And I went, well, my question is how would you deal with that?

Because, see, for me, I rest on God doing the work, and I go, God knows better than me. But if you think it's something that you had to say right or do right, then you're the one that's going to feel horrible about your kids not believing because you didn't do the right thing.

I trust in God that he knows better than me. That's right. It allows you to sleep well.

Yeah. So let's look at this last paragraph, because this is going to get into what I mentioned, the Holy Spirit's relationship with his word.

So the Holy Spirit is the divine teacher who guided the apostles and prophets into all truth as they committed to writing

God's revelation, the Bible. So right there. This is a distinction.

We're going to get into this a lot more when we look at the doctrine of the Bible, the bibliology, the study of the

Bible, because here what we're saying is that God inspired, and I said looked into it.

We already looked at the Holy Spirit. Go back to the first couple of episodes in this series, and we covered it.

But the Holy Spirit does a thing we call superintending, a very, very important doctrine.

We're going to come up to that again when we look at salvation and our sanctification, because this doctrine is in all three.

It is the idea that the Holy Spirit indwells a person, that every choice that they make is exactly as God intended it to be.

And so what you end up seeing is that this is something you see in sanctification.

When we do good works, God gets all the credit, but we make that choice, but it's really God working through us.

Same thing in regeneration. We make that choice, but God works through us so that that choice we made is exactly as God intended it to be.

God gets all the credit. This is what happens. So this is, we could rightly say, God's Word. God gets all the credit.

The Holy Spirit worked within a person. Now what we're making the distinction here is this is not, as some teach, a dictation model, that the

Holy Spirit told the writers of Scripture what to write verbatim, and then they wrote that.

That's not the case. It's not the inspired writer position, meaning that the writers themselves were inspired, because we actually know

Paul wrote at least one or two other letters to the Corinthians. How do we know that? Because he references them in the letters we do have to the

Corinthians, but those were not inspired. So as we dealt with, when we dealt with the

Holy Scriptures, the thing of inspiration is that they knew at the time that it was inspired.

I mean, Peter will refer to the writings of Paul as inspired. They knew it then. They didn't need some

Catholic church 300 years later to say it was inspired. And by the way, those who make that argument, you don't understand what the

Council of Nicaea actually was doing in 324 -325. They were looking not at the books that we accept as Scripture, but other books saying, are those part of Scripture?

And the argument was no, because they weren't accepted immediately as Scripture. But one of the roles the

Holy Spirit does is he went through guiding the apostles and the prophets in the writing of the Scripture, so we could rightly say every word of Scripture is

God's word. Any comments on that, Jim? Nope. I think that that's right.

We need to be careful when we talk about Scripture. We need to be careful that we don't think of the Bible as a collection of books that men determined to be inspired, because the canon was not determined by man, it was discovered by man.

So the minute God authors a book, it is canonical. It's authoritative and inspired.

And the church discovered that. The church never determined that. The church at one point codified what believers understood the collection of inspired books to be, but they didn't decide on which books were to be inspired or which books to canonize.

The canon is a byproduct of God's inspiring process, His inspiring work. And so it was up to Christians simply to discover which books were apostolic and authoritative and genuine and inspired, and to regard those with the reverence that those books were due, due to the fact that God had written them.

And when you refer to the word canon, for folks that may not know, canon just means measure, and it's the measuring rod of how we know this is

Scripture. And when we speak of the canon, we're referring to the 66 books of the

Bible that were recognized as inspired by God. And so we didn't canonize them.

In other words, we didn't say these are Scripture. It's that people recognized they were Scripture because God revealed that.

Yeah, men don't determine the canon, God does. And that's a big distinction between us and the Catholic Church, because they would say they did it.

And yet we see rabbis in 70 A .D. in the Council of Jamnia who solidified the

Old Testament. They knew what those books were. That's the earliest we have of a writing of an argumentation for books.

And some of that was because there were some people trying to put books and saying they were part of the canon. So the council got together and said, no, this is what makes up the canon for the rabbis.

That was long before. Yeah, and the Roman Catholic Church would say, you can't know what the canon is until the

Church decrees what the canon is. So then the question is, well, where does the Church get its authority? And then they have to say, well, the

Church gets its authority from Scripture. Which Scripture? Which Scripture gives you the authority? How do I know which Church tells me which canon to believe?

And it becomes a circle, right? The canon is supposed to tell me which Church is supposed to tell me what the canon is.

But how do I know that book's actually Scripture that tells me that the Church has that authority because it may not be canonized yet?

The Church says that Scripture. How did some of those books get canonized in the 1500s during the

Reformation when it was like, well, they needed these books to solidify some of their doctrines, like Purgatory, that doesn't exist anywhere in the

Bible. So they had to go to these other books. So they added to the canon then in the 1500s.

And consequently, there's nothing in Roman Catholic theology that would keep them from adding to the canon now. Why they couldn't grab

Jesus Calling and say, let's make that canonical. Why not? Well, see, the thing that you end up having there is that they really didn't then canonize all the

Bible in 324, 325. They really did it in the 1500s with addressing the issues of the

Reformation. Oops. And adding the Apocrypha to it. And how do we know that they really did it in the 1500s?

How do we know that there's not a further council that might canonize other books? Yeah. Well, and this Pope, anything's likely.

Oh, yeah. Exactly right. So let's look at this last... With this Pope, he might canonize Ibram X. Kendi's book works.

He could. Hey, you never know. He may canonize Jesus Calling. You don't know. Let's look at this last sentence we have here.

Every believer possesses the indwelling presence of the

Holy Spirit from the moment of salvation, and it is the duty of all those born in the

Spirit to be filled with, controlled by the Spirit. So this is kind of really wrapping up everything we've been saying today.

So the Holy Spirit indwells us at our salvation. As soon as we're regenerated, the Holy Spirit indwells us, and it is our duty to be filled with the

Spirit, and yet that is something that's this superintending again, because it's only something

God can do. So how do we do that? Well, we make those choices, but yet those choices we can't make on our own.

Now, we can rebel against the Holy Spirit. We can grieve the Holy Spirit. We can resist the work that He's trying to do by deciding we're going to do our own will.

That's a choice we can make, and that becomes our choice. That's called sin and disobedience. The Holy Spirit's not responsible for that, but the things that we would do that are sanctifying, we couldn't do that apart from the

Spirit, but yet we have this duty to do that. We should be looking to submit ourselves to the

Word of God and the Spirit of God every day. One of the things the Word of God tells us to also submit to is one another, and that's why we can't do this alone.

We have to be with other believers. We have to have pastors, teachers to guide us, and deacons to serve us, and we are all to be serving one another.

A proper church, and I think the only time we're going to really see this will be in heaven, but a proper church would be one where everybody in the church is using their gifts to serve one another.

An unhealthy church is a church that has 20 % of the people doing 80 % of the work.

That is unhealthy. A proper church should be 100 % of the people doing 100 % of the work.

That's a healthy church. If you are in a church and you're not serving, I don't mean to be the bad guy to tell you this, but you're part of the problem.

You really are, because God didn't put you in that church to just sit as a bystander and take up space in a pew or a chair.

Not too many churches have pews anymore. God put you in that church to serve that body with the gifts that He gave you, and that's your purpose.

If you're not doing that, then that church is hurting. Oh, you may not see how it's hurting, but the reality is what

Scripture teaches us is that the Holy Spirit gave us gifts to serve the body. We've been talking all about the body of Christ today and the

Holy Spirit's role in that, and He gives us gifts that we'll talk about next week, but He empowers us to serve the local body.

This is our job, brothers and sisters. We are to be actively serving in our local body.

Now, let me say something with this, and I'm going to say this as someone who runs a parachurch ministry.

Parachurch ministries can be a problem. Our first priority must be our local church, not some parachurch ministry that teaches what we love to hear.

There are a lot of really good parachurch ministries out there. I'm not going to criticize, say they're all bad.

The thing is that many people will give their time, money, prayers, effort to the parachurch ministry and not do what a parachurch ministry's proper role is.

The parachurch is to come alongside the church. You are to be taking the things you get from a parachurch ministry and using them within your local body.

That's where the focus is. The purpose of the parachurch ministry is to come alongside people to help the local body.

We're not going to say you shouldn't donate to Striving Fraternity. We would love it, but you know what? Don't donate to Striving Fraternity if you're not donating to your local church.

We don't want that then because your local church is more important. That is the focus. This is going to be the same thing with the using of your gifts or how you spend your time.

Do you, and I want you to consider this, do you spend as much time with your local church, serving your local church as you do trying to gain information or other things from all the parachurch ministries that you're involved with?

I want you to take some time and examine that in your life because even though there are so many, many great parachurch ministries that could teach us a lot of things, the purpose is not for us to just learn a lot of things and get a lot of head knowledge.

It is to bring that back to our local body. The church should be 100 % of the people serving 100 % of the time.

Anything you get from a parachurch ministry, you should be looking at it and saying, how can I bring this into the church? Not do this on my own, but this should be part of the church.

Everything that you're gaining, all that knowledge, should be shared, discipled with other people. This is a real sticking point that I have.

One of the things with Striving Fraternity, the reason so many people have a hard time being able to define it is because so many people look at parachurch ministries and they go, well, they just do evangelism, or they just do apologetics, or they just do finances, or they just do family, or they just do creation, and they do these stovepipe things.

And because they focus in one area, they are really, really good in that one area.

And that's why people have a hard time with Striving Fraternity, because we see a problem with that model. The problem is that there's no discipleship going on because everyone's stovepiped.

They're just focused on one thing, and the church can't function with everybody wanting just the whole church to do just one thing.

No, we all come to the church with our individual talents, our individual gifts, and the study that we get outside, we bring that together as one body, many members, one body serving one another.

And so what Striving Fraternity wants to do is bring all those things together. That's why we don't teach just one area.

We teach all of it because we should all be discipled in all of this, and that's the thing. Do not take the things you get from our podcast.

You listen to all the other podcasts on the Christian Podcast Community. That's great. You're getting a lot of knowledge. Are you bringing it to your church?

Are you taking that and bringing that in to use to disciple people in your local body?

I listen to Pastor Jim's sermons each week on the Christian Podcast Community, the

Kootenai Community Church Worship Service. As they're going through Hebrews, I'm taking notes, because there's a lot of stuff, when

I get to preaching through Hebrews, what am I going to do? I'm going to bring that into my local body. And as we study, and things like that,

I bring that up. Don't let Pastor Jim know that, but he comes up, he's mentioned often in our

Bible studies, from the pulpit, in one -on -one discipling. Why?

Because I'm not just taking what I'm learning from him and just saying, I got some head knowledge. No, we should be taking everything we're learning and bringing it into the body so that the body of Christ as a whole is matured.

I really believe that if more churches would be focused that way, more believers would focus that way, that we would have a much stronger church in America that would be able to stand up against, and actually everywhere in the world, we'd have a stronger church that would stand up against the attacks and there wouldn't be a need for what many churches did this weekend in preaching about biblical sexuality.

Because the church would stand up and be looking to serve as a church in their local community.

And so, this is a function of the Holy Spirit in the local church. Jim, anything else you want to add?

No, I think that's all very well said. I'm not sure I could add anything to that. So, are you saying

Justin Peters needs to return to Kootenai Community Church because God has spoken that to you? I got a great book that, you know, it's called

God Doesn't Whisper. You should read it if you think that got you. I might try to read that, yeah. I might learn something.

Folks, we appreciate all the support you guys get and if you learn a lot from this, if you would share this podcast so that others could bring it to their local church.

And we do want to just mention our sponsor, MyPillow. They allow us to continue doing this program and many other things.

The more things you buy from MyPillow, the more support you give to them, the more that they support us.

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Use the promo code SFE. It stands for Striving For Eternity. And they will not only give you a discount, but they will also help to continue their support with us to keep programs like this, well,

I can't really say on the air, but, you know, on your device. I used the SFE code right before Christmas.

I bought my wife a lovely set of slippers and she loves them. All the ladies in my house, my two daughters were there yesterday.

They put them on. They loved them. They thought they were great. So she's thrilled with them. They're very comfortable and she couldn't be happier.

You know, they actually seem to be, I don't know what it is. I'm hard on my slippers. I don't know.

But I go through, I get these, I would go through, get these really cheap, you know, five, $10 slippers from Costco.

And I would go through, I'd buy like two pair because I would go through both of them within a year.

You know, I work out of the house. I'm here a lot. We don't wear shoes in the house. I wear slippers. These actually lasted longer than any other slipper

I have. So we'll have to see how long. I don't know why I'm so hard on slippers, but these, and they are comfortable.

They're still, they still feel as comfortable as the first day I put them on. And I've had them for like months now, six months,

I think. Man, it'll be interesting to see how long these last. I mean, they're more expensive than a

Costco slipper, obviously, but if they're well built. One thing I've learned is that it doesn't pay to buy cheap things.

Yes, I have learned that, but I'm not always able to convince my wife of that. Sometimes she thinks that we could get it cheaper and we can, we can.

But will it last this long? You know, so folks, I hope this has been beneficial to you.

I hope it's been helpful to you. I do want to mention that we have a lot of podcasts over at the Christian Podcast Community.

Go to christianpodcastcommunity .org and check out the different podcasts that we have there. There's, we've added some new ones.

Matt Slick Live recently was added. That is one that you could check out.

We also have one, the, again, much like, you know, Jim Osmond, where you have the, the preaching.

In there we have the pulpit ministry of Pastor Jim. But we have a new one called

Truth For You. And this is more modeled a little bit, a little bit after Grace To You, where you have the sermon.

This is the preaching ministry of Andrew Smith, Dr. Andrew Smith, down in Jacksonville, Florida.

And what, it's actually not just, it's not fully the sermon, where you have like Grace To You has that little bit beforehand.

They do a little bit of discussion and then you get into a, you know, it's like four or five minute discussion and then a 25 minute sermon.

This is more probably like a, you know, 20 minute discussion and a 30 minute of the sermon.

And the, what, the nice thing about it is you get to hear the sermon, but Bud Alheim and Pastor Smith spend a lot of time discussing all the stuff that doesn't make it in the sermon or what was behind the sermon.

And Jim, I'm sure you've experienced this, that most sermons, we don't get to finish everything we want to say in a sermon. All that study that, you know, just like, well, okay, you missed it.

Yeah, there's a lot that, a lot that lands on the editing room floor. Oh yeah, but you, I know you try to make up for it by speaking double time.

I try to, yeah. So if folks, if you don't, if you listen to Kootenai Community Church morning services, just know that, you know, if you do up the speeds, that's one that you may have to kind of bounce the speed back.

You know, I've listened to Jim long enough that I can still listen to him at triple speed. You get a bit acclimated to it.

Yeah. Although this week, I, you know, with that Southern boy that was preaching at your pulpit,

I can only max out at triple speed. I may have to switch to like using Spotify because I can do three and a half speed.

And, you know, Justin at three speed is kind of Jim at one speed.

You know, it's, you know, just certain people have that.

Yeah. So folks, if this has been helpful to you, if you got a lot out of it, you know, I asked if you wouldn't mind sharing it with others and consider going to strivingfortrinity .org

slash support and supporting us there after your local church. This podcast is part of the

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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