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Q&A Day 2 laborersconference.com
Maybe a short Q &A, unless they're just off the top of their heads. Oh, well, you just you'll just read them out loud.
All right.
It looks like all of our questions.
So let's hand them to Mike. It's like my presbytery exam all over again. I wasn't joking, it really was like my presbytery exam all over again.
Mark 1, 9 -12 states that Jesus was suddenly compelled into the wilderness. Is there any reason why it was a desert? Is it because Satan is an evil spirit, an evil spirit-like creature? But is there any significance in the waterless spirit to go to?
Well, I would, I think that leads a bit into what we call biblical theology with developing an idea over the broader scope of the Bible. And so starting first and foremost with Genesis 2, that the first Adam was tempted in a lush garden.
The first Adam failed in a lush garden, but Christ the second Adam was tempted in a desert, in a dry place, a place where the flesh was deprived and yet was victorious over that temptation and continued to honor God in that moment.
And in compound with that, I would think places like Jeremiah 17, that might be a little bit of Psalm 1, but I would look at the idea of Christ being tempted in the wilderness and being drawn to a desolate place as being a full circle picture of the second Adam, of Christ as succeeding where Adam failed, and the parallels that are with him succeeding in the dry place while as the first Adam failed in a lush paradise, essentially.
All of his needs and even wants were sustained there, and yet it wasn't enough to keep him from stumbling.
So in Leviticus 16, it's kind of a lengthy portion of Scripture, but Christ came to fulfill the law, right? So it's important that everything Christ does be in accordance with that fulfillment. And Yahweh spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they came near the presence of Yahweh and died.
And Yahweh said to Moses, Tell your brother Aaron and those not to enter at any time into the holy place in the veil before the mercy seat, which is on the ark, so that they'll not die. For I'll appear in a cloud over the mercy seat.
Aaron shall enter the holy place with this, and with the bull from the herd for a sin offering, and a ram for a burn offering. And he shall put on the holy linen tunic and the linen undergarments and attired with the linen turban.
Then he shall bathe in his body and water and put them on. He shall take the congregation of the sons of Israel, two male goats, one for a sin offering and one for a ram for a burn offering. Then Aaron shall bring near the bull for the sin offering, which is for himself, and he may make atonement for himself and for his household.
And he shall take two goats and present them before Yahweh at the doorway of the tent meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots on the two goats, one for Yahweh and the other for a scapegoat. Pardon me while I flip the page.
Then Aaron shall bring near the goat on which the lot of Yahweh fell, and that shall be for a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell shall be presented alive for Yahweh to make atonement for upon it and sent out into the wilderness as a scapegoat.
And this would immediately have fallen Jesus' baptism.
Good night.
Every other Thursday night.
Testing. There we go. I wasn't going to say anything because I was just grabbing the mic because I thought Big John had to say something and he was just joking around. Now Keith is putting me on the spot, so I guess I have to say something.
I would say by knowing what the essentials of the faith are while still holding our convictions. So I would say even the men up here where I could say we might be in the same denomination, we're going to have differences.
But we're still together because we agree who God is. We agree what the gospel is. We agree what the mission of the church is. And so that's really what unites us together. Now, should babies be baptized?
Yes.
Okay, well, that's the conversation we're going to have back there. But it's going to be a conversation among brothers because we recognize that we are brothers and we recognize the essentials of the faith.
It's funny, I've reached out to some of these men already so they know about this, but I'm primarily a podcaster. I'm not a pastor. In fact, you guys got to see my first sermon, so I'm still shaking a little bit after that.
But I appreciate all your support and your feedback. Glory to God. But as a podcaster, one of the things that I want to do is I want to make it clear what I believe and why I believe it, but I want to make even more clear what makes a Christian a Christian.
And I want to show others that we're not always going to agree on everything, and that's okay. When we get to glory, the Lord will correct us. And until then, we can lock arms and focus on what's most important.
The glory of God, loving one another, and reaching the lost. So, you want to say something?
I think you said it.
You said, was that the last question?
Oh, okay.
What does it mean to believe in the Holy Spirit if he doesn't believe us?
I'll take a shot at it. Can you ask the first question again? I just want to make sure I'm getting the heart of the question. This is interesting because when we study the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, we recognize there are three specific things that are related to the Spirit that are unique.
One is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. We know there's a passage that says where Jesus talks about blasphemy in the Spirit. And then there's the passage that you're referencing, which is grieving the Spirit.
And then there's also one that talks about quenching the Spirit.
Yeah.
That's 1 Thessalonians.
And so, historically, theologically, these terms have been sort of defined within certain boundaries. Like blasphemy of the Holy Spirit would not be something that we believe a believer could do because this is something that's unique to that situation.
But when it comes to the subject of grieving and quenching the Spirit, those two things would be things that only a believer could do because the believer is the only one who has the Spirit. And I'm only relating this to the unique nature in which these phrases come.
We're never told not to quench Jesus. We're never told not to grieve the Father. I guess we are in a sense. But the term is specifically for the Spirit who lives within us. And there is an abode of the Spirit.
The promise of the New Testament, I'm going to talk about this tomorrow in my sermon, the promise of the new covenant is the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit who lives within us for the purpose of empowering us for the work of ministry.
That is the very role of the Spirit in our heart right now. He lives within us, empowering us to serve, to glorify Christ, and to point to Him. So when we are engaged in things that are opposed to that mission, the mission of pointing to Christ, the mission of building up the body, the mission of doing those things that the Spirit has indwelled us for, then we are opposing the very action or desire, if you will, of the One who lives within us.
And so I think the question of how do we do it, we do it through the active disobedience to the Spirit of God. And what I'm going to, again, preview the sermon tomorrow, 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it's profitable for teaching, reproof, and correction, training righteousness that the man of God may be competent and complete for every good work.
We first and foremost grieve the Spirit when we disobey God's Word, because He is the author of God's Word. And therefore, if we are not submitted to the Word of God, we are first and foremost in opposition to the Spirit who lives within us, who is calling us to follow that Word.
So that's the simple answer of what grieving is. I mean, obviously, you could say sin. That's easy, but that's more of a fleshed-out answer. Does that make sense? Is that good?
I want to add something to it. I like that. So it's called the Truth and Love Network, right? Ephesians 4 is where that comes from. And we'll see that unity in the Spirit is the first, I don't know, 17 verses, 16 verses of that.
But that portion of Scripture where it says, Grieve not the Holy Spirit is at the end of Ephesians 4, right? And we see how the body of Christ working in unity with one another, one Spirit, one mission, one baptism, one faith, right?
And then you get to, I don't know, 23, be renewed in your spirit and your mind and put on the new man, which is the likeness of God and being created in righteousness and the holy and true. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speaking to one other with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.
Be angry and do not sin and don't let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the devil an opportunity. He who steals must steal no more, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he'll have something to share with those who are in need.
Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only a word which is good for building up what is needed so that it will grieve or so give grace to those near and do not grieve the Holy Spirit. So it would appear that the opposition to spirit, unity in the spirit would grieve the spirit of God.
If we're to use this text is what is, what is unifying and what is pleasing to God is the first part of a, of Ephesians chapter four, that I believe it stands the reason that the contrast of that would in fact,.
Grieving.
I want to kind of combine that question with the first question. So how do we keep from grieving the Holy Spirit? Well, obey God's word, act like a believer. How do we come together amongst different denominations without compromise?
Act like a believer, not a Baptist. Act like a believer, not a Presbyterian. Act like a believer, not a Pentecostal or church of God. Those things are secondary. Believer is first. And so yielding to the spirit is going to look different than even maybe how we've been doing it in church for, for years.
We've kept ourselves separated, but if I'm going to act like a believer and yield to the Holy spirit, I'm going to get in the foxhole with somebody who may be a Presbyterian, maybe a church of God because my obedience and, and kingdom efforts are more important than my, you know, secondary differences.
It's like, it's like my brother said a few minutes ago, if they're primary or orthodox differences, yeah, we got it. We got issues. But if they're secondary, you know, we can talk about them, you know, on our lunch break, but in the trenches we can work together.
And on that subject, just giving a tiny bit of clarity behind the curtain as so what's been going on with the laborers behind the scenes since the last laborers conference is we've seen a, an increase in the intentionality of that to where we, we all know where we go to church.
We know what's going on in each of our churches to the point that we are praying for each other to congregations. We know, we know the aches and pains of every single one of these men here in their local bodies.
We know how we can be praying for them on the regular for that. And we still debate apparently.
And it's, and it's intentional. It's got to be intentional. You got to do the hard work. I mean, we, and these men labor in their local churches, they labor for their members, but then they also choose to labor with folks outside their congregation that are, that are different than them.
And then we are hopefully going to be working on like statements. How can a Baptist and a Presbyterian come together? How can we come together with church of God? How can a cessationist and a continuationist come together?
I think we, we would do well to work on statements of unity rather than division. So those are things that we probably going to be working on in the future.
That's an interesting question. When you consider some sections of the old Testament, like you have King Saul, that it says that the Lord left him in his sin and that it does not go well for Saul. But then part of the promise with the Holy Spirit that we see laid out in the new Testament is this idea of sealing.
And so we don't necessarily have this picture that the Holy Spirit up and leaves. I'm not persuaded as much as at least, but what I would say is that in the case of things like quenching the spirit or grieving the spirit, there is a lack of awareness of how the spirit is work.
You guys remember that, that book experiencing God many years ago that was oftentimes that was a wake up call for a lot of churches as the ordinary ways that God was already at work in their communities.
They just weren't listening. And I think that's probably closer to what we're getting at with the effects of grieving the Holy Spirit is not, is not being on the same wavelength. That makes sense.
Those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.
And I,.
I think that one of the ways that the Lord disciplines his people is by giving them a sense of conviction over their sin in such a way that at times we might feel like the Lord has abandoned us. Now it's important to distinguish between what we feel and what's factual because we can feel like God has abandoned us.
You know,.
In Psalm 54 David says after he's committed this grievous sin,.
Right?
Where he was with that Shiva and you know, everything that happened there. One of the things that he says is take not your Holy spirit from me. It can feel as a Christian extremely, we can feel extremely weighed down when we sin.
And so the Holy spirit never truly leaves the Christian, but sometimes it might feel that way because he's giving us the conviction over a particular sin or even something we're not doing that we should be doing.
And so no, the Holy spirit never truly leaves a believer, but sometimes the Lord is going to use our circumstances to discipline us. So I don't know if that answers the question or not, but I guess the answer would be no, he doesn't leave us.
It could feel that way sometimes. And it's important when that happens to run to him and ask for forgiveness so that we can be in a sense restored to him and have full communion with him once again, because the Lord is always with us, but he is not pleased when we sin.
So an additional thought, if you don't mind, and I don't want to belabor it too much. I know we've been on this question for a while, but this came to my mind because I talked, I talked to the men in our church about this.
At times,.
Um,.
And this may seem like a departure,.
But like,.
Like any good hound dog, I'll make my way back.
Um, and,.
First Peter three, it says,.
Likewise, husbands live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. If you want to know what that means, ask Dan afterwards,.
He'll tell you all about it.
No,.
I'm just, I'm just saying, you know, don't ask me, go ask one of these other guys.
No, uh, no, no,.
This,.
This is the point since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. And the point I make to guys, when I'm talking to them, I said, do you realize how you treat your wife actually affects your relationship with.
God?
That's literally what the verse says, says you're supposed to live with your wife in an understanding way for the, she's the weaker vessel for in your relationship with her. If you mistreat her, if you don't love her and cherish her and,.
And,.
And show her the,.
The, the,.
The,.
The be Christ to her, that actually does affect your fellowship with God.
This is going to, it says your prayers will be hindered by this.
So, so,.
So the, so the point I want to make is, and this may seem like an old, maybe old Southern Baptist cliche. Nothing can change my relationship with God, but my fellowship with God can be affected. And my fellowship with God does change.
And maybe you guys don't agree with that phraseology. That's kind of an old way of saying it, but my relationship with God is based in the blood of Christ and it cannot be changed because that is something that is sealed by the spirit.
Somebody said that earlier, mentioned the sealing of the spirit,.
But,.
But my fellowship with God is, is in one sense, able to be affected by my willingness or unwillingness to be obedient. My unwillingness. And I use the wife as an example, if I'm unwilling to love my wife, if I'm unwilling to do those things, it can affect my prayer life.
It can affect this, what the very verse says, and other things can happen if I am seeking in whatever area to be disobedient. So it goes back to the issue of grieving the spirit.
This obedience matters.
And, and,.
And, and yeah, say that again.
Yeah,.
Absolutely.
Obedience is better than sacrifice.
Very good. Yeah.
So, so, so,.
So that's just a thought,.
We do have to consider that our relationship won't change, but there, there may be a reason why we feel far away from God. In the old, you know, the old saying, I'm just full of cliches today,.
But if,.
If you feel far from God, who moved,.
Right? Like, like,.
Like you're, you know, that's the question.
All right,.
I'm out of cliches.
Then. I had no idea. I heard,.
And I was like,.
Come on, Florida boy.
I just want to say the guy whose first language is not English, understood that better than Keith Foskey.
So unity in the Holy spirit, there was interpretation. So everybody here now is a continuation. It's my job is done.
Let's roll.
We're going to talk about that afterwards.
That was the last question.
Do we have any last minute questions? Yes. All minds, Heinz and all hearts at peace.