16 - The Ministry of the Holy Spirit, Part 2a

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology.

We are glad to have you with us again. I am always glad when the both of you who are attending, okay, there's like three of you, sorry, when all of you are attending, but no, we do want to welcome some new students.

We got some new students this week who have signed up and we are always encouraged when we get to send out some new syllabuses and to get to know some new students.

It is always an encouragement. I had the opportunity to be with 40 men who were with Jeremiah Cry's East Coast Tour and got to meet a student who

I didn't know before personally and he's been watching the show and the class and taking the lessons and so it's good to get to meet some of you students when

I do go to different places and go to different churches and get to meet you guys and so we did, before we start class,

I will say we did have a good time at the East Coast Tour which Jeremiah Cry only attended one day and we did have some folks that got to preach the gospel outside of a murder mill, an abortion clinic.

It wasn't very good for their business. They usually do about 40 to 50 killings a day and they were only able to do about 5.

Oh, too bad. Seriously, but that is, son, that was very encouraging to see that so many brothers and sisters got out to be able to share the good news and it is an important type of thing that it is an issue that you'll be hearing more from us in some documentaries we're hopefully working on this summer.

So, but today's lesson, if you have a syllabus, if you have your syllabus, that is something you can get as a student of the

Academy and you can go to the website that you see, should be maybe down there, is that about right?

Yeah, okay, and you will be able to see where you can go and sign up for the

Academy and get yourself a syllabus so you can pay attention. And we are right now in lesson number 12, which is the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. And this lesson here is going to be lesson 12,

Holy Spirit part two. But let me just say it's going to be 2A.

I say that because there's no way we are going to get through all of this. So, we are going to go through the lesson of the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. Now, if you remember as we started with the doctrines of the Holy Spirit last week, we looked at the doctrines specifically of His ministry in the

Old Testament times, in the life of Jesus Christ, and then in the future.

Most of it we focused on the Old Testament times. Now, what we want to do is, in this lesson, focus on the very important topic of the ministry of the

Holy Spirit in the present age. And there's some misconceptions with the doctrine of the

Holy Spirit in the present age. Now, I want to say up front, because I know that I'm never going to get through all the material.

So, if I go a little bit long, that's alright. But I want to say this up front because there's going to be some people who are going to disagree with the position we take on certain things, and I'm perfectly okay with that if you disagree with us.

You disagree with me, send me an email. You can email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

We don't mind if you disagree with us, but if you disagree, what we ask is that you would do it, okay, using good biblical hermeneutics.

Now, if you don't know what those are, go watch our class on the school of biblical hermeneutics, alright?

Don't give us your experience to say that you disagree with us, because I can give you my experience, and what makes your experience better than my experience?

Nothing, right? I mean, our experiences could be wrong. I mean, I remember stories of people seeing pink elephants that flew.

Now, maybe the LSD had an issue with it. I don't know. Just saying. People have experiences that aren't always a good thing.

So, we can't always trust that, but we can trust the Word of God. We're going to try to fairly and accurately give you what the

Word of God says as we go through tonight's lesson. Tonight's lesson, next week's lesson are going to be very crucial, because they're going to set the stage for some things that we're going to end up talking in the following lesson.

And if you have a syllabus, you'll look at lesson 13 and know exactly where we're heading with this, and know what the topics that are going to be coming up very soon are going to be.

And so, these are important lessons. Alright? Now, some things have happened since the early 1900s when it comes to the study of the

Holy Spirit, specifically in the present age. What we have happened is that in the present age, we have a case where about 1905 started what was known as the

Charismatic Movement. It really started actually as the Pentecostal Movement, eventually became the Charismatic Movement, led into the faith healing and all of that type of stuff.

But what you had happen is you had some people, some groups, that started to look into the

Holy Spirit and take the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this present age and go really afar in one direction.

And the reaction that some of the more fundamentalist type of preachers did was to actually just want to be so separate from going to the extreme on one side that they went to the extreme on the other side by just completely ignoring the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. So, in some churches, the only thing that's discussed is some views that they have of the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. And that's the only thing that's discussed in church almost. And then you have the other extreme in churches where the

Holy Spirit isn't discussed at all. And you see this even in the books that are being written nowadays.

You see in the books written that there's some churches that, or some books

I should say, that don't even touch on the Holy Spirit in the more conservative fundamental circles.

Not much is being written on the Holy Spirit anymore and His ministry. And then in other camps you have way too much maybe written on the

Holy Spirit and to a point where it's almost an imbalance.

And I'll say that with some of the stuff that's going on, it could even be blasphemy.

Because things that are of the devil are being called of the Spirit. And you say, whoa, dude!

Are you nuts? What are you saying? You're saying things are of the devil? How do you know that?

Well, the only thing I could say is that when things that are credited to the

Holy Spirit that are not from God, in other words, God's Word says they can't be true, then it's not of God.

So who would it be from? Well, either self or the devil, right? Or demons, okay?

So what we have is a case where we need to have some balance in this.

Okay? So we're going to start. We will look at first some of the ministries of the

Holy Spirit that deal with some topics that may be less controversial.

And then we're going to get into discussing a little bit of the gifts of the Spirit. Probably get to that next class, all right?

So let's start with those things this week to lay a foundation. This week what we want to do is start with the regeneration of the

Spirit. Regeneration of the Spirit. Regeneration of the

Spirit. This is the impartation of new life to those who are spiritually dead.

And we have a passage that talks about that. Well, let me start with this. The passage that doesn't talk about that is when

Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead. Okay? I know a lot of people like to quote that.

But if we're going to properly use our biblical hermeneutics, Jesus, when He was calling Lazarus from the dead, was calling

Lazarus from the physical death that He suffered. It was not a spiritual lesson.

Okay? If you disagree with me, tough. No. It's a thing where we want to make sure we interpret the

Bible accurately. So is there a passage, though, that we don't have to misinterpret to make it say what we just said?

That regeneration is that work of the Holy Spirit of imparting new life into those who were once spiritually dead.

Well, there is one, and it is Ephesians chapter 2 and the first two verses. Ephesians chapter 2 and the first two verses.

So, what it says here is that, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now a work in the sons of disobedience.

So you see here that this is talking about how we were once spiritually dead.

In other words, as Romans says, we were enemies of God and God imparted into us new life.

Okay? This was something that God has done. He imparted into us new life by the

Holy Spirit. Now, first, if you look in your syllabus, we first see the impartation.

Let's first look at that. And let's look at this in Titus chapter 3.

Well, actually, let me first give you your fill -in -the -blanks there. The regenerating work of the Spirit is accomplished in connection with the mercy.

That's your first blank, the mercy. The cleansing and the renewing.

So, mercy, cleansing, and renewing.

Okay? So if we remember those three things, the mercy, the cleansing or washing, depending on translation, and renewing.

Let's look at Titus 3. Titus chapter 3.

And this is verses 2 to 7. Alright?

To speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, to show perfect courtesy toward all.

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,

He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our

Savior, so that, being justified by His grace, we might become heirs to the hope of eternal life.

So you see there, I read that whole portion, even though really it was the last part that we wanted to focus on that spoke of the mercy, the washing or cleansing, and the renewing.

That describes this impartation and how this is.

The Holy Spirit cleanses us by His mercy. He cleanses us to a renewing, to giving us new life.

Now, if you notice in both Ephesians 2, when it spoke about being spiritually dead, and Titus 3, did you notice something in both of them?

Before it talked about the newness of life, did you notice what it first mentioned? The way we once were.

Did you see that? I hope you saw that. Because there are some folks that almost, I think, sometimes forget where we've once been.

We need to remember that. The reality is that I see people that preach on the streets sometimes and they are almost acting as if they've forgotten where they once came.

They act as if they're perfect.

Like they never sinned. And this is something we have to remember.

And we should be careful to also make sure we portray. Yes, we are renewed.

We have been given new life. However, when we think about that, we also must remember that though we have new life, we once were, as Titus said, slaves to various passions.

And this is the thing that we have to keep in mind. That when we talk to the lost, we don't want to give an attitude that we're better than them.

Because, but by the grace of God, so go we. We would have been in that same situation.

Alright? So one part of the regeneration work, and if letter A there you see is impartation, letter

B is the implications. And so the first implication that we have to regeneration, that regenerating work of the

Spirit, is that regeneration gives the believer a new nature.

A new nature. You can see that in 2

Corinthians 5 .17. 2 Corinthians 5 .17.

And that says, Therefore if anyone is in Christ, I love this, he is a new creation.

Do you see that? He is a new creation. The old has passed away, and the new has come.

That's one of my favorite chapters of the Bible, favorite passages of the Bible. And what you see there is that this is where we, by the

Holy Spirit, by regeneration, become a new creation. Do you notice again though? What happened? The old passed away, and in came the new.

Okay? That is what we end up seeing. When we look at the ministry of the

Holy Spirit, we see that one of the implications of regeneration is we are a new creation.

You know what though? Sometimes you and I have trouble acting like a new creation, don't we?

I mean, we still want to stick in that old person. We want to be that old person, to stay with those old sins.

And that becomes a problem. Alright? We need to remember and to remind ourselves that when we were saved, when

God saved us, we became a new creation. Sometimes we just got to remember that and act like it.

Alright? A second implication is that regeneration gives the believer understanding.

Okay? This is 1 John 2 .20. But you have been anointed by the Holy One and you all have knowledge.

So what this is saying is that we get this knowledge from the Holy Spirit. This is one of the ministries of the

Holy Spirit. He illuminates our thinking. Now, what does that mean?

It means to give light to. To bring a light to the believer in such a way that they can understand what is being said in the

Scriptures. Alright? Now, this is one of the things where do you need to have a man teach you what

God says? Well, not really. This is a thing, one of the parts of the

New Covenant is that we get to have the

Holy Spirit indwell us and teach us Himself. And this is the beautiful thing of the

Holy Spirit that He's going to teach us. Now, it doesn't mean that we should not go to church because now we don't need to listen to some pastor preach.

No, we should go to church and we should learn from godly men who have put the time into the study because if you followed faithfully through our class on the school of Biblical Harmoneutics you realized that good

Harmoneutics takes a lot of time. And so you gotta make sure that you're putting that time in.

That's why we have men that spend the time in God's Word to study it.

But, the Word of God faithfully preached would give you a proper interpretation so that the

Holy Spirit can take His Word, the Word of God and illuminate our minds to an understanding and give us application to God's Word.

That's what the Holy Spirit is going to do when He renews us, when He regenerates us.

He gives us, not only does He make us a new creation or give us a new nature that's your letter

A, your first one there but the second one is that He gives us understanding. He gives us understanding.

And this is important because with this understanding we can take

God's Word and interpret it on our own. Now, can we make mistakes in interpretation?

Yes, we all can. Okay? We can misinterpret

God's Word if we do sloppy Harmoneutics. Okay? If you just take the passage actually, let's put that passage back up the one on the new creation, 2

Corinthians 5. Alright? I want you to look at this verse. A friend of mine,

Greg Coco, once said this that he was in a church and someone had been praying whether or not to leave her husband and go and marry the guy she was having an affair with.

And she came to this verse and this verse was one of the ones that told her

Oh no, was it the other? Okay, so turn that one, yeah. No, not that one.

Oh, it was Colossians, sorry. Colossians. The Colossians passage where it says, put on the new man.

Okay? And so, what she did was she took that and interpreted that that she should divorce her husband and marry the guy she's having an affair with.

Now, this is where I say that just because someone may profess to be a believer doesn't mean that everything they interpret is going to be accurate.

That would be a wrong interpretation. Why? Because we know from other scriptures God hates divorce. He's not going to have you divorce your husband and go marry another man.

He's very clear on that. So, what we see is that when we look at regeneration one of the implications is that regeneration gives the believer a new nature second is that it gives the believer an understanding of the scriptures.

So that's regeneration. Now let's take a look at second the indwelling of the spirit.

The indwelling of the spirit. Okay? Now this is miraculously when the

Holy Spirit indwells or dwells within or abides within the body of every believer.

Okay? Now I was careful there. We're going to get to that later but every believer has the

Holy Spirit. We're going to look at some passages later on that. But this is one of the things when you look at the

Old Testament keeping in mind the separation between the

Old Testament believer and God if you looked at the temple you would see that there was all of this separation set up.

There was the place where the Jewish people can go and worship God but within the temple there was a separate place called the

Holy Place where only the priests could go and even specifically a family of the

Levites that were able to go and serve and within that there was a

Holy of Holies that only the High Priest could go and that once a year. There was separation between God and man seen in the

Old Testament. Jeremiah 31 31 and following talks about the New Covenant.

It's also in Ezekiel and what you see in the New Covenant, the promise to the

Jewish people of old was that there was a time that would be coming when God would indwell

His people so that they would no longer need to be taught by their neighbor but that God Himself, the

Spirit Holy Spirit would indwell the believer so that God is within them and there's no longer the need for the temple because your body will become the temple of the

Holy Spirit. He will dwell there instead of dwelling on top of the Ark of the Covenant He will now dwell in the body of the believer.

So let's take a look at that. Let's look at Acts 11 and verse 17 and this we will see that in here possession is not based on the believer.

Not based on the believer. So this is under the section that the letter

A there in your syllabus the possessors of the spirit are all and only believers all and only believers.

So possession is not based on the believer. Look at what it says in Acts 11 17.

If then God gave the same gift to them as He gave to us when we believed.

So do you notice when that is? When we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we receive this same gift of the Holy Spirit when we believe.

You can also look at Romans 5 .5 as another example of that. We don't have time to turn there.

We see that possession is not based on the believer because it's all believers when they believe but sinning

Christians still possess the Holy Spirit. And let's look at 1

Corinthians 6 verse 19. Or do you not know that when your body is a temple of the

Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God you are not your own.

I guess really we should have given the context here but in this context what you have is a believer that's basically talking about believers that go with prostitutes and he's saying your body is the

Holy Spirit and when you go be with a prostitute you're taking God with you. You're taking the

Holy Spirit with you. So even in a case like that when you're sinning you haven't lost the Holy Spirit.

That's going to become essential to some doctrines that we'll look at later when people question whether we can lose our salvation or not.

The Holy Spirit will not depart from us as he did in the Old Testament. Remember from our last lesson with the

Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. He left Saul because he was indwelling people at that time for leadership not the way he does in the

New Testament. There's a difference here. In the Old Testament he could indwell

Saul while he was leading and then leave Saul when he was in sin.

That becomes a difference that we see between Old and New Testament. Not only does the possession of the

Holy Spirit it's not based on a believer. It is that a sinning

Christian still possesses the Holy Spirit. Third in your syllabus there is that the absence of the

Holy Spirit Oh I skipped a verse. Ephesians 4 .30 This is still under that sinning

Christians possess him. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

This is important. Thank you for letting me know. I missed that. If you notice this that we can when we sin grieve the

Holy Spirit. Not only can we grieve him but do you notice that we are sealed until the day of redemption.

This is showing that even though we may sin he's not going to depart from us.

We are not going to be without the Holy Spirit. That is one thing that we can look at.

The third one is that the absence of the Holy Spirit does not indicate does indicate an unsaved position.

If someone does not have the Spirit they are not saved. Romans 8 .9

Romans 8 .9 You however are not in the flesh but in the

Spirit. If in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you anyone who does not have the

Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. Do you see this here?

Leave this up for a moment. Do you see this here? This is being very clear that the

Spirit indicates salvation. If you do not have the

Spirit you do not belong to Christ. That is what it's very clearly saying.

What you see here is in letter A of your syllabus that possession of the Holy Spirit is for all and only believers.

Possession is not based on the believer. It's not because of what the believer did. It's not because of his works.

Sinning Christians still possess the Holy Spirit and the absence of the Holy Spirit actually indicates an unsaved person.

All and every believer has the indwelling

Holy Spirit. That is something that is important to understand.

The permanence, letter B, the permanence of the Spirit and we already saw this, a

Christian cannot lose the Spirit. We saw that in Romans 8 -9.

Just because you sin you don't lose the Holy Spirit. He doesn't leave you.

Sin, if you look in your syllabus there, your next blank there is sin in the

Christian life results in the grieving of the Spirit, not the departure.

We saw that in Ephesians 4 -30. The Holy Spirit will be grieved by your sin but He does not depart.

Sin will result in a loss of fellowship with the

Holy Spirit but not the loss of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Do you understand? You see the difference there?

There's a lack of fellowship between us and the Holy Spirit but we don't lose

Him. He doesn't depart from us. That will be important and I think you're already seeing that if the

Spirit doesn't leave us and the Spirit that the presence of the

Spirit indicates salvation, I hope you're seeing here just the beginnings before we even get into the doctrine of salvation and we're going to look into that in more detail whether we can or cannot lose our salvation.

I hope you're already seeing how building these doctrines upon one another help us to understand these later doctrines.

If we understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit and we understand His indwelling, this is going to help us later to understand whether we can lose our salvation or not and I hope you're already seeing the answer to that.

I'm letting you know what my view is but I would say that no, you can't lose your salvation and if you disagree with that, don't just burn me up on flames on Facebook and stuff and don't start posting all kinds of things about me yet.

Wait until I build the argument for it and if you disagree, that's fine just show me where and why you disagree.

I'm giving you my reasoning on how and why I interpret the passages the way I do and we can disagree and we can discuss that disagreement.

So, we saw the permanence of the Holy Spirit. Letter C is that we have some problems. Let's take a look at Acts 5 and verse 32.

The question that I have here as we read this is, has God only given the

Spirit to those who obey Him? Now if that's the case, this is let's read this and we are witnesses to the things, to these things and so is the

Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.

Now there brings up a question. So, is the Holy Spirit given only to those who obey

Him? Alright. I'm half tempted to not answer that question and let you guys battle that out on the

Facebook group. Hmm. Will I be a good teacher or not?

Will I make you have to think on your own? I would argue that you already know the answer if you've been tracking with us.

I hope you already see. Has God given the Holy Spirit only to those who obey

Him? Well, we've already seen that the Holy Spirit will not depart somebody who is disobedient.

There's a grieving but not a departing. Alright. So then what do we do with 1

Samuel 16? Alright. This is verses 13 and 14.

Did not Saul lose the Spirit? I mean that's a fair question. It says here in this passage that Samuel took the horn and anointed him, this is

David in the midst of his brothers, and the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day and Samuel rose up and went to Rimeh.

Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and a harmful Spirit from the

Lord tormented him. So now here comes the question. If the

Holy Spirit could depart from Saul how do we know the Holy Spirit can't depart from you and I?

Does that sound like a fair argument? I think it is. I think it would be a fair argument if it wasn't for the fact that we need to look at passages like Jeremiah 31 and following.

Don't have time to turn there. But I already mentioned this was the promise. God said in the

Old Testament in Jeremiah, in Ezekiel that there would be a change in the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. He will no longer indwell only leaders for leadership's sake the priests and those that are leading

God's people, but He's going to indwell everyone so that we don't need people to teach us

God's Word. That was a promise to look forward to. That is part of the New Covenant.

So when we look at that in the Old Covenant, we see that the New Covenant is different and the

Holy Spirit's ministry to us is different. He functions in a different way and in that way that we focus what we have is we have the ministry of the

Holy Spirit in the New Testament where He does not depart from us. And we've got to be fair with those things to make sure that we properly interpret those things because those are things that there is some where some take some passages that we're going to look at much later when it comes to whether you can lose your salvation and see those.

Okay? And so let us take a look we looked at regeneration we looked at indwelling now let's look at the filling of the

Holy Spirit and this may be as far as we're going to go today. I don't know that we're going to get past this, but we will look at the baptism of the

Holy Spirit next week and we'll look at the sealing and then we're going to look at the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Always a controversial topic for people, but let's look at the filling and even this starts some of the discussion that many of us that are believers in Christ have where there's going to be some differences.

Okay? But we want to start by defining some terms and making sure that we understand what is meant in the

Scriptures so that we can be accurate with what we're talking about.

Alright? So, with that said, let's start with the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. I have there in your syllabus there that this is the ministry of the

Holy Spirit in the believer's life whereby he controls them.

He controls them. To be spirit filled means to be spirit controlled.

Okay? And I'm going to hopefully make this point. Let's look in Ephesians 5 .18.

Ephesians 5 .18, we see this. It says, And do not be drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the

Spirit. Now, before you take the passage off there, I want you to take a look at this. We're going to break this down, but notice the contrast between being drunk and being filled with the

Spirit. Okay? So, God is making through Paul a connection, an illustration between drunkenness and the filling of the

Spirit. Okay? Well, how does God deal with drunkenness? How does He deal with drunkenness?

Well, the way He deals with drunkenness is by letting loose our ambitions.

So, we have less control, in a sense. And we just do things.

We're controlled without thinking so much. Alright? But it is this correlation.

Now, I want to deal with this word, be filled. Let's put that up again, if we could. But be filled with the

Spirit. Okay? I want to break down that word, filled for a moment. Okay? In the

Greek. The first thing, and this is important enough that I put this in your syllabus because I want you to write this down because this is important to remember.

Okay? And that's why we give you the blanks. We give you the blanks so you'll remember the things that are important to write down.

Okay? So, what you have there is that first off, it is a command.

It is a command to be filled. In other words, it's an imperative in the

Greek. When you have an imperative verb in the Greek, it's command. It's something that God, through Paul, is commanding you and I, who are believers, to do.

We are to be filled. That's going to be important. In other words, we're commanded to be controlled.

We're going to see that more next week. The importance of this. But let's continue.

Not only is it an imperative, but it is a present tense verb. In other words, it is continuous.

So it's a command and it's continuous. It's a present tense verb.

What does that tell us? That tells us that this filling is something that we are commanded to always be doing.

In other words, we are to always be controlled by the Spirit of God. Does that make sense?

I hope so. When we look at this, it is something that we are commanded to do. Something that we should be consistently and always doing.

Alright? Now, there is a condition with this and we already saw some of this a little bit, but let's look at 1

Thessalonians 5. Do not quench the Spirit. We already saw this a little bit, but we can quench the

Spirit. So, the condition of this filling is do not quench the Spirit. Do not squash the

Spirit. And though we already saw this one earlier, we should not grieve the Spirit.

Do not grieve the Spirit. So we see two different things.

We see that there is a quenching of the

Spirit and a grieving of the Spirit. Those are the conditions that happen when we are not being filled with the

Spirit. So we see that there is do not quench, do not grieve, and then thirdly, you'll see walk, and this is your blanks now, walk in obedience to and dependence upon the

Spirit. And this is Galatians 5 .16. But I say, walk by the

Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. So we are to walk by and depend upon the

Spirit. Okay? So, this tells us something. This filling of the

Holy Spirit, it is a command, a continuous command, something that we should be doing.

Now, if we should be doing it, if it's commanded upon us, can we do it?

That's a good question. There is a sense where it's yes, and there's a sense where maybe it's no.

So, what we see is we see that we have a case where the

Holy Spirit, the filling of the Holy Spirit, is that we need to that it is a command that we should be continuously living by, and the condition of it is that we do not quench the

Spirit, we do not grieve the Spirit, but we walk in obedience and dependence upon the

Spirit of God. And this is something that yes, we can have a part in, but it's not all us.

Okay? So, do you see that? There's both in play. Now, what is the consequences or the benefits of being filled with the

Spirit? And we're not going to look up all the verses here that you have in your syllabus, because we just don't have time tonight, but the consequences of the

Spirit, well, there's the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, 22 and 23. That is a benefit of being filled with the

Spirit. There's worship in Ephesians 5, 18 to 20. Worship is a benefit of being filled in the

Spirit. Submission, Ephesians 5, 21, we saw that already, but that is a benefit that we get, we submit not only to God, but to one another.

Boy, you sit there and say, I don't want to submit to anybody. Yeah, I know, that's the issue.

None of us like to submit, but that's a benefit of the Holy Spirit. We are willing to submit to one another.

Proper relationships, that's right after the submission to one another, yeah, we get into all these relationships in Ephesians 5, 22 all the way to 6, 9.

Husbands, wives, parents, children, employees, employers, master, slave, you know.

And then lastly, service in Acts 4, 31. We see these are benefits of the

Holy Spirit. Okay? Each one of these are benefits. So, what we looked at today is the regeneration of the

Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the filling of the

Holy Spirit. Now, next week's class we'll look at the baptism of the

Holy Spirit, the sealing of the Spirit, and then lastly we're going to look into the gifts of the

Spirit, which always is a nice controversial subject. Alright? Now, if you,

I'll say this again, that if you disagree with us, I'm perfectly okay. We're not all going to be right in our theology, and I'm perfectly fine with you guys being wrong.

I'm just kidding. But we do want to make sure that we're accurate, and we want to make sure that we're learning from one another.

If you disagree with me, it's one of two things. Either I'm going to learn from you, or you're going to learn from me.

But we should be humble, and as we said, as a blessing of being filled with the

Spirit, we'll be submitting to one another. We'll be willing to learn from one another. Alright? So, if you disagree with me, let me know.

Alright? And let's look at the Scriptures and discuss them, because we want to be accurate, as accurate as we can be, this side of Heaven.

Make sense? So, we're going to continue this class next week, and we'll finish this up, and then we'll pick up lesson 13.

For those who have a syllabus, you'll know what's ahead, and we're going to look at, in detail, some of these gifts of the

Spirit. So, you can email us if you want, at academy at strivingforeternity .org

If you want to get a syllabus, you're interested in becoming a student and getting some of the benefits.

Some of the benefits of being in the academy, enrolling, and being a paid student is the fact that not only do you support this ministry, but you will get some things that we send out at different times that we have, where there's different things we'll send out, either paper mail or sometimes in email.

We have some different things. So, we encourage you to be looking at maybe enrolling.

These courses go around the world for free. We don't charge you at anything. They're all put up on the web, on YouTube, so they're all there for you to watch free of charge.

It costs us money to put this together, but we don't charge you to watch them. But if you want to help support us, you can do that.

If you want to support someone else, we have many students that want to be enrolled in the membership for the year, but they can't afford it.

You can help sponsor someone else. Just go to the website, enroll, and put a comment saying this is a scholarship for some other student.

Now, one of the things we're always looking to do is to encourage someone else.

Some of you on Facebook know that I put out a request looking for someone for all of us to encourage this week.

Let me read a verse. I don't have this here because this came up before the show.

We were just really praying over some things, and we wanted to ask you guys on Facebook who to encourage.

We've got a lot of people, so we're going to be having a lot of people now that we can encourage. I encourage you to join also our

Facebook group, Striving for Eternity on Facebook. The reason is because we post some thinking questions for you throughout the week to get you thinking about these lessons.

We have some discussions on there. This verse comes to mind. In 1

Corinthians 12, verse 11, for just as the body is one and has many members and all of the members of one body, though there are many, it is one body.

So it is with Christ. The thing there is, though this is speaking of spiritual gifts, which is part of our lesson today, the thing is that we are to be one body in Christ.

We should be encouraging one another as one body. One of the things that's interesting about the body is that when even a small part of the body, it can have a great effect.

I'm thinking of James chapter 3. Now this is mentioning about the tongue being such a small member of our body, but it gives an illustration when he says, speaking of the tongue being a small body in verse 3, he speaks also about the bits in chapter 3, verse 3.

If we put bits in the mouths of horses so that they obey us and guide us, our whole bodies as well.

And look at the ships, that was such a large ship driven in strong winds by the very small rudder.

Why do I say that? Because a brother posted in Facebook about his dear bride of a little over two years who stubbed her toe.

And you go, you want encouragement because you stubbed your toe? Well, this sister stubbed her toe and it ended up having some ramifications that caused a chronic illness and has caused her to be greatly discouraged.

And so we're asking you to get in touch with, she's not in the Facebook group yet.

We're hoping that her husband will add her to our Striving for Eternity Facebook group and then we'll tag her so that you would be able to have her and add her as a friend.

But I gave her, I gave you there her Facebook thing so you can add her but encourage her this week.

She's struggling with a chronic illness that's caused her to just be discouraged and to feel, as some of us often do, to feel that there's times where we're just discouraged and we need help.

We need to have someone to encourage us. And so I'm asking you to befriend her, to find out more about her and to look to encourage her if you can.

Alright? And just get to know her. This is something that, you know what, as a body of believers we should be doing in one another's life.

And this is something we want to encourage you to encourage others. We all need times of encouragement.

Alright? And so we encourage you to encourage her. Alright? And so and that's by the way, facebook .com

jhess718 jhess718 Alright? And if you're in the New Jersey area and you don't have a church to go to on Sunday, consider coming out and visiting with us.

We are planting a new church in Jackson, New Jersey. Faith Bible Church.

You can see the website. We're working on creating a new website for it, but that's the website that we have there now.

You can find out the times. We worship 11 o 'clock on, at least right now, 11 o 'clock on Sunday mornings.

We have services throughout the week. We have an evening service, so if you go to church somewhere in the

New Jersey area, but want to get some good teaching on Sunday evening, consider coming out and visiting with us at Faith Bible Church.

If you have a good church and you want to come out for evening service, that's fine, but if you have a good

Bible church, don't come out and make our church your home. You've got one already. You've got a family, okay?

But if you don't have an evening church and you want to get more teaching, feel free to come out, alright?

We just got done teaching a four -week lesson on evangelism and we're going to start something new in the evening services, but we have meetings throughout the week, so I want to encourage you to be praying for us.

It is a lot of work to plant a church. It's a lot of work when we start up a new church and so we would greatly be encouraged by your prayers or even your financial support.

You can feel free to support either Striving for Eternity or Faith Bible Church. You can contact us from our website and either way let us know.

And I will say this, be checking out our website, strivingforeternity .org.

It is under construction and will be changing very soon. We decided not to wait until the entire thing is completely done because we want to get it out there soon.

So we're going to do this in stages, so you should be seeing that within hopefully even this week, alright?

So we thank you for joining us. Please make sure to let your friends know to come and join us next week and we're going to continue on the ministry of the

Holy Spirit, getting into some pretty controversial topics, alright?

And so we just want to encourage you as always to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.