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'm 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 now 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. 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 with Jeremiah Cry. I 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 something 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 doctrine 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 are 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 all right. But I want to say this up front, because there's going to be some people who are going to be disagree with the position we take on certain things.

And I'm perfectly okay with that if you disagree with us. If 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. All right? 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 can 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 that 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 can 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 else 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, alright? 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 Holy Spirit

Regeneration of the Spirit. Regeneration of the Spirit. This is the impartation of new life to those who are spiritually dead. And do 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, alright?

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.

Okay? 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 Harmonetics you realized that good Harmonetics takes a lot of time.

And so you've got to 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 Harmonetics. 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 Okay, so turn that one, yeah.

Alright. 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. Alright? So, what we see is that when we look at regeneration Okay? 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. Alright? 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 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 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 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 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 he's 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. Okay? So that becomes a difference that we see between Old and New Testament.

So 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 okay Ephesians 4 .30 Ephesians 4 .30 this is still under that sinning Christians possess him and do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption and this is important thank you for letting me know I missed that this if you notice this that we can when we sin grieve the Holy Spirit okay but 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. Okay so that is one thing that we can look at. Now so the third one is that the absence of the Holy Spirit does not indicate or sorry does indicate an unsaved position.

So if someone does not have the spirit they're not saved. Okay 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.

Okay so 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 in. Okay if you do not have the spirit you do not belong to Christ.

Okay that is what it's very clearly saying. So what you see here is in letter A of your syllabus that possession of the Holy Spirit is for all and only believers. So possession is not based on the believer.

It's not because of what the believer did it's not because of his works. Okay sinning Christians still possess the Holy Spirit and the absence of the Holy Spirit actually indicates an unsaved person. So all and every believer has the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Okay. And 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. And we saw that in Romans 8 and 9.

Okay just because you sin you don't lose the Holy Spirit. Okay he doesn't leave you. Alright. So 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 430. Okay the Holy Spirit will be grieved by your sin but he does not depart. So sin. 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'll 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.

Alright. 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 like 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. Alright. 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. Alright. So we saw the permanence of the Holy Spirit. Letter C is that we have some problems. Okay let's take a look at Acts 5 and verse 32. And the question that I have here as we read this is has God only given the spirit to those who obey him.

Alright. 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.

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. 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 Rhema.

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 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 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. That's your blank there 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 there God is making through Paul a connection an illustration between drunkenness and the filling of the spirit.

Okay. Well how does drunkenness. What is he saying about drunkenness. That it is a controlling thing. Really the way it controls us is by letting loose our ambitions. So we have less control in a sense and it 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 verse 5. Do not quench the spirit. And 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 a quenching of the spirit and a grieving of the spirit. Those are the conditions that happen when we are when we are not being filled with the spirit. Alright so we see that there is do not quench do not grieve.

And then thirdly you will see walk in. 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. Alright something that we should be doing now if we should be doing it if it is commanded upon us can we do it.

That is a good question. There is a sense where it is yes. And there is a sense where maybe it is no. Alright. Um so what we see is um 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 is not all us.

Okay. So do you see that there is both in play now what is the consequences or the benefits of being filled with the spirit. And we are 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 is the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5 22 and 23 that is a benefit of being filled with the spirit. There is 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 is the issue.

None of us like to submit but that is a benefit of the Holy Spirit. We are willing to submit to one another proper relationships. That is right after the submission to one another we get into all these relationships in Ephesians 5 22 all the way to 6 9 husbands wives, parents, children employees, employers master, slave and then lastly service in Acts 4 31 we see these are benefits of the Holy Spirit.