Discipleship Lesson 5 – Meet The Spirit Of God Who Empowers & Transforms My Life

Transcript

Let’s open our Bibles to Galatians chapter 5. Now, to tune you in to where we are, we are going through, we’ve gone through, the doctrine. Now, we’re going through the duty part. I’ve gone through the theory of discipleship, spiritual exercises for spiritual health and fitness, but now I’m showing you how to apply it. And the setting for this, and I can’t remember if I said it here or last week when I was speaking up at the Bible Institute, but in my youth pastor days, for five years I was a youth pastor, you wouldn’t have caught me very long up on this platform. I preached in the aisles, and you know what? It’s much more effective when you’re talking about a point and you turn right there and look at someone and you’re standing three feet away from them. They really pay attention, but that’s not my goal. My goal this morning is for you to think about sitting on the other side of a table with your favorite, morning beverage, coffee or tea or whatever, and with your Bible open to Galatians 5, and I’ve got mine open, and I’m going through another lesson of discipleship.

And discipleship is huge. In the Scriptures, God says there’s an unfading crown for those who are shepherding, nurturing the flock of Jesus Christ. Now, primarily that crown goes to the elders because they’re the first line of those who are in charge of shepherding the flock. But I really believe because of other Scriptures that anybody that truly nurtures others, that have come to Christ and helped them to kind of get really grounded and growing and connected and not driven with every wind and storm and wave, that there’s an unfading crown. In fact, Daniel says, those that turn many into righteousness will shine like the stars forever. And I believe that God attaches a special reward on those who lead people to Christ and those who nurture people to Christ. So, to give you an opportunity to get into that deeper or to start into that, I’m doing a group session, but it’s like a one-on-one.

So, here’s the goal. We’re looking at the Spirit of God. Now, remember, we’ve already gone through salvation, and if you remember, I went through the twenty-two different times the Gospel was presented in the book of Acts, and we looked at how you can’t just pray one prayer, that it’s actually not a set of words, but a relationship that begins, and then that relationship issues into being fed by the Scriptures, and I talked about reading the Bible and the effect of the Scriptures and how tied it is to salvation. It’s engrafted into our souls, but now we’re looking at what is so central to every part of our spiritual lives, and that’s the Spirit of God. And so, I have a session, and so if you’re sitting with me at my favorite vitamin C place, I would say this morning we’re going to talk about meeting the Spirit of God.

Now, I don’t mean for the first time because discipleship is only for believers. By the way, when I cover salvation, many times over the years as I’ve covered that, the person I’m discipling gets saved because they say, you know what? I’m not sure that what you just described has ever happened to me. I say why don’t we just do this?

Why don’t we renew all of those commitments to Christ that you made at salvation and make sure that you really are connected. And they go, yeah, I really like that. Many of them are completely different people. It’s, they knew all about the Lord. They just never had connected. They’re like the eighteen-inch rule.

They knew about Him in their head, but they’d never received Him in their heart. And a lot of people are going to miss Heaven by eighteen inches. They know all the facts, but they don’t know the Person, and there’s not a relationship there. So, we go through salvation. That, remember the evidence of salvation is as newborn babes, we desire the sincere milk of the Word?

You can tell if the person has been born again and become a new living spiritual creature by whether there’s an appetite for the Word of God. And we go through that. But then I say, all the rest of your life is tied right here. The Spirit of God. So, I want you to meet the Holy Spirit, and what is it we’re looking at?

He’s the one who empowers us and transforms my life. If we are born again, we are connected to the power source, and that power source, the Holy Spirit of God, is changing us. We’re empowered to deny ungodliness and we’re transformed. In fact, the Holy Spirit, do you know what His primary role is? We’re going to see this morning.

He is the one that does the personality transplants. Most of us, we, our personality we were born with, it’s called the works of the flesh, manifests itself in very awful ways. Anger and wrath and outbursts and dissensions and jealousy and strife and malice. That’s how we were born. He transplants into us the personality of Christ and that’s, it’s so powerful that in the early church, in fact when the church was born at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, now I’ve been teaching all week long at the Bible Institute, and so I had them repeat, they’re 263 first year students at one of the last Bible institutes left in the United States.

And I don’t mean there are many called Bible Institutes, but a Bible institute used to only study the Bible and evangelism, discipleship. That’s missions, evangelism, discipleship. No, you couldn’t get other, like music education and computer and stuff. It was just purely a Bible institute.

There are fewer and fewer of them left, and I was at one of them. In fact, I saw our three students, Aleah, and Ethan, and Hannah, that were there. We have 1% of the freshman class up there at Word of Life. But I was teaching them, and I said to them, I said where was the church born?

This is your quiz. Acts chapter 2. So, now I’ll give you a quiz. When you want to know about the birth of the church, and Day of Pentecost, what chapter do you look at? Very good. Now, do you know what you just did? You increased your capacity to remember when you see and hear and say, each one is an exponential increase in retention of things.

And so, in Acts 2, the church was born at Pentecost and when the church was born at Pentecost, what happened is all of the former barriers and divisions and strife that characterize normal people were broken down. Now, you say, where’d you get that? Have you ever noticed at the end of most of Paul’s epistles, like in Romans 16, and in Philippians 4 and in Colossians 4, and you can pick them up in other spots, but there are these little lists of names, quite a few names.

If you ever take the time to study those names. You will find out that in one breath, Paul talks about a new family grouping of people where there are people of every ethnic background, of every socioeconomic strata of former, very separate types of people. People that you know there. We have that in America. There’s a whole group of people that don’t ever do what we do. They don’t fly through the airport where all that Ebola is. They have private chartered jets. Now, remember one time I’ve told you all my stories. I went with someone like that. My roommate, when I was going to college, he introduced himself. I said, I’m from Texas. I said, great. Tell me about Texas. Oh, he says, we have a ranch. He said, how big is he? He says 10,000 acres. I said, what do you grow? He says oil rigs. They, I visited, they had 10,000 acres of pumpers and he was from a dynasty, like the, all the television series about that wild money flowing. And he said, how would you like to go on a trip the way we travel? And I said, okay, as long as we don’t do anything God doesn’t approve of, he said, oh no. And when we flew, we were brought to the loading dock. When we got off, we came in a car, we left in a car. None of this dragging stuff through, you know, the airport, I never touched my bags. They were put in, they were taken out, they were taken to the room, they were opened in the room. When we went to a, we went to see the opening of Annie in London, no less. We came to the back of the theater. They opened the door for us. There was no money tickets. They ushered us into our box. The normal people were out there; you could just see them moving in the darkness. We were in this box, and the, it was like Annie was in our box with us! She was right in front of us, and you never had contact with commoners. The restaurants we ate in, there were no prices on the menu. If he, my friend said, if you need to ask the price, you can’t afford it. See, that kind of lifestyle breeds something.

Remember I told you a while back, Bonnie and I were, we were 12 rows separate on an airplane crossing the ocean, and so they had sorrow for us, and they moved us up. And they moved us up into the, not just first class, they put us in the nose of the airplane. Up where there’s a table, and the people are all sitting around it. It’s really different up there. Someone from in the back behind the curtain came up and used our bathroom and I looked at them. Get out! This is our bathroom, up here in the front with us!

See that breeds? And you get like that, and you don’t like people. Did you know the early church at Pentecost you had Roman senators next to slaves? That’s as far as you could get in culture. And they were called brother and sister, and they greeted one another with a holy kiss.

There was no prejudice, there was no separation of socioeconomic, race, whatever. It was all marvelously transformed in Acts 2 by the power of the Spirit. You read, there’s 19 different nations represented, and these people were transformed. After we go through that, what I emphasize is, that this is how you know that you have made connection to Christ. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is passing away. The new has come, and salvation is not me joining something, not me saying something, not me affirming something. It’s me becoming the dwelling place of the infinite God of the universe, who transforms me by His Spirit. I become, and you become, the very dwelling place of God, and that changes us. That transforms us. And that’s what happened at Pentecost. And did you know us sitting here this morning. Every born-again believer sitting here this morning, all of us collectively are a continuation of what began on the day of Pentecost.

God moved in, broke down all the racial barriers, and all the hatred, and all the kind of pompous, you-don’t-belong-in-my-part-of-the-airplane-lifestyles of the first century church, and made the people one. And that’s what He continues to do. That’s what’s so amazing about being in Christ.

And so, as I’m sitting at the table, I remind them. Think about what happened on Pentecost. God’s Spirit was washing clean sin-stained hearts. The people at Pentecost. Now, who was at the day of Pentecost? They were all religious people. Everybody at Pentecost had come to the feast in Jerusalem. The majority of them traveled at great expense.

They came three times a year. These were huge events. They were very religious, they were very sacrificial, and they were devoted to their religion. The only thing is. They had sin-stained hearts, and no amount of religion can take care of that. You can push it away and try not think about it. You can ignore it and try and hope that you’re good outweighs the bad, but only God’s Spirit can wash clean sin-stained hearts.

That’s what He did at Pentecost. That’s why there was this, everybody on the day of Pentecost that entered the church had the same experience there. They were joyfully talking to each other and saying, I’m forgiven! I’m forgiven! All my sins. Jesus Christ. The one that died on the cross is the one that, and that all was prompted by the Spirit of God entering them and empowering them to know that God had washed them clean.

The washing of regeneration, you know Titus 3:5, God’s Spirit, breathe life into sin-darkened souls. Did you know that everybody that you live next to, that you work next to, that you go to school with, and that you’re related to, that’s not a believer, has a sin-darkened soul. That’s why all day long you can say that is not tissue. That is a living… Abortion is killing a conceived by God, human being. And they go no. It’s tissue. It’s tissue. Don’t get, don’t politicize this. See, they don’t understand that God said, life begins at conception. They don’t understand that. Why? They have a sin-darkened soul. The light of truth doesn’t penetrate very far.

And so, that’s why we have to be so careful. We cannot force those people to live righteously. We can only expose them to the truth and ask God’s Spirit to breathe life into them. See, that’s what’s very dangerous about Christian political activism. We’re trying to impose God’s standards on people that have totally sin-darkened souls that will only follow those standards as long as you constrain them to, as soon as they’re loose, they go back to their lostness.

And so, all of the movements, I lived through the seventies and the eighties, the moral majority and everything. And it was like a dyke was built and as long as the believers could plug all the holes and spend all their time doing that, they kept the dyke up. But it was hopeless because you can’t hold back sin-darkened souls with moral rules.

You can only see God’s Spirit breathe life into them, and all of a sudden their sin-darkened souls come to life, and they go, whoa, that’s wrong. You ought to hear Bonnie’s testimony sometime. My wife was led to the Lord by reading the Gideon Bible, and when she read that, instantly as she fell to her knees and called the name of the Lord, she knew that the alcohol that she lived to drink was wrong, and nobody screamed and yelled and told her, stop drinking. The Spirit of God in her heart bore witness. She knew what the righteousness of God was because the Spirit of God works within us when He transforms us. Also, here’s what everybody that we live around and go to school with and work with, they have empty, hopeless lives. That’s why.

Do you know what the newest big industry is in Silicon Valley? Read the news. Read Bloomberg, read New York Times. Do you know what is the fastest growing segment of industry in Silicon Valley? It’s prostitution. Because those mega millionaires and billionaires have everything and they just, they’re just trying to get more of the things they want the most. And we’re even having prostitutes murdering Google executives because they’re charging a thousand an hour and they don’t want to pay; they only want to pay $900 and it’s unbelievable. And you say, what’s all that about? Everybody is born with an empty, hopeless life. And they fill it with something. Alcohol, sex, money, Western Michigan, there are a lot of empty, helpless souls that are filling that ache, earning money. They still have the first dime they made and everyone in between, and that’s what keeps them going, and if they didn’t have the money, they would be empty and hopeless again. And that’s what God’s Spirit can fill and make us not empty and hopeless. Even if, you know what your true wealth is? If you lost everything, it’s what you still have left. What cannot be taken away by, a flash crash in the market, or by a downturn, or by an extended depression, or deflation? That’s the new thing that’s happening. Deflation.

What do you have no one can take away from you. It’s what God’s Spirit does. And that’s what He did on Pentecost. He took sin-stained, sin-darkened, empty, hopeless lives. And He took barren lives. People that were, that had nothing redeemed in their lives, nothing that would last forever. Everything was going to burn up. They were barren, and He turned them into literal spiritual gardens that were just bearing the fruit. So, that’s, and you know what, as I sit across the table, I say. Do you remember when your sin-stained heart got cleaned? In fact, you know what tonight is? I’ve had more people ask me about tonight’s service. I don’t know what, I read my bulletin, but I didn’t, since I wrote it, I don’t know what I said wrong, but tonight is we’re having communion and I’m doing a discipleship on why we celebrate communion, how we do it. What the steps are in 1 Corinthians 11. It’s just what Biblical communion is all about.

How you have to look back at the cross, how you have to look up at Christ and His coming, and then how you, the Lord said we’re supposed to look within and when we look within, we’re not supposed to just say, wow, it looks pretty nice in there. We’re supposed to purge anything out that displeases the Lord.

That’s what God is doing. And so, discipleship is you say, hey. Do you remember when your sin-stained heart got clean? Do you remember when your sin-darkened soul, the breath of life of God came in? Yeah, I just taught membership class yesterday. In fact, it was so much fun. I stopped early yesterday morning at my favorite vitamin C dispensary, and as I was standing there in line, they says, boy, you’re pretty chipper early this morning! It was the Water Street vitamin C dispensary that I was at, and the person behind the counter says, boy, you look pretty chipper this morning. Where are you heading off to? I says, oh, I’m going to a member class. All of the workers, member and what? I said, oh, it’s just a group of people that are joining. I was playing along with it, and they, they were so curious. They said how long does it last? I says, oh, it goes all day long, over six hours long. They went, wow. Membership in what? I mean they were starting to get interested in joining something. Because they like it when it’s something that is like climbing a mountain, and I says, oh yeah. I said, it’s a church membership. And it was so sweet. One of the workers said, who would go six hours to classes to join a church? And that gave me an opportunity to say people that have empty, hopeless lives and that were sin-darkened souls. And you know what was really interesting? One of the workers, you know what happens is more spiritual you get, they peel off. One of them said, where is this place that a room full of people would sit for six hours to join it? And I said it’s the one that’s over between Stadium and Main, and… oh, that one. It’s interesting. He was a college kid, and I guess that our maybe a lot of college kids live around us. We said, oh, that church. I said, yep. That’s a place where God’s Spirit is filling empty, hopeless lives, and God’s Spirit is transforming barren lives into spiritual gardens.

And so we need to understand the Holy Spirit, and what I do right now as I’m sitting across, I usually have a little piece of paper that I’m writing on or depending on the person I can already have it written out.

And I have on that, these references. And what I do is I just take them, and if you want, if you’ve never done this, you can open your Bible to Genesis 1:2. We’re coming back to Galatians, but I’m going to project it on the screen and I say, look at Genesis chapter 1. And they can all find that you always start with something they can find. I say it’s in the front right after the index, and they go right there. And I said, look at this. It says, the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. I said, did you know that it’s the Holy Spirit that was the agent of creation? The Holy Spirit is the one that… I know that God created the heavens and the Earth and Jesus Christ, all things were made by Him, without Him was not anything made. But the agent, the actual hands-on fashioner, the agent. What we find is the operative force, the member of the Trinity that does stuff, is the Holy Spirit, and He does it for the glory of God, and to point to Christ, but He is the person who is the agent of creation.

If you keep going. He’s also the agent of conviction. My Spirit will not always strive, God said. God didn’t say, I’m striving. He says, My Spirit is striving. And so, what you show as your discipling is how utterly vital the Holy Spirit’s work is. He is the one that was the one who created all things.

That’s why when in Genesis chapter, or Exodus chapter 20, the Holy Spirit says, I created the Earth in six, literal, 24-hour days, just like you’re supposed to work six literal days. Sun up to sundown. Evening and the morning. You know that whole solar thing. He said, just like I created the universe that way and rested the seventh. You worked that way and rest the seventh. Everybody in the 14th century BC was a creationist, a literal, a maximalist. We have so many terms nowadays. They were all six dayers because the agent of creation explained it. And He was the only one that was there. Carl Sagan wasn’t there. The Spirit of God was, and He wrote down what He did.

That’s what’s so interesting. We trust other people more than the Spirit of God who wrote down the truth of God. And so, you explain. He’s the one that convicts people. And just like with my vitamin C people yesterday, I go no further. If the Spirit of God is not working on the other side, if He is not inside them, making them curious, convicted, wanting to know more, interested in understanding how to be saved.

You don’t, we can’t save people. I can’t. You can’t. And no quick prayer, and no, we can’t do the work of regeneration. The Holy Spirit does. He’s also the author of Scriptures. It says in 2 Samuel 23:2, David said, the Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His Word was in my tongue, and I even have them mark that in their Bibles. That’s one of the key verses about inspiration. Holy men of old didn’t speak whatever they wanted to. They were moved, Peter said, by the Holy Spirit. This is David saying that the Spirit of God, He’s the author of the Scriptures, and when I read the Bible, it’s God’s voice. He spoke by Me. That’s why when Daniel read his Bible in Daniel 9, do you know what he said?

He said, we haven’t listened to your prophets. He looked at reading the Bible as listening to the prophets, tell what God wanted. You know what one of the evidences of salvation is? We want to hear God’s voice. We can’t go very long without hearing His voice. We long to hear His voice, and so we plan to neglect other things so we can.

In fact, when I was being mentored and trained by Dr. MacArthur in the 80’s, he said, there’s something you need to learn if you’re going to succeed in the ministry. Plan to neglect. He said, my goal in life is I plan to neglect everything except what God called me to do, and to be responsible for. And he said, I surround myself with people that are better than me at everything they do, so I can do what I was called to do.

Did you know we need to plan to neglect whatever it takes to hear the voice of God because He is the one that speaks through His Spirit writing down the Scriptures. So, then I take him on, John 16:13, the Spirit of God is the one who reveals Jesus. He won’t speak of Himself. He’ll speak of Me. He’ll show you things to come. It’s the Spirit of God. When we read the Bible, the Holy Spirit is hoping and desiring and working to make us see Christ, not Himself. See, there’s a little problem with this new movement of fixation on the Spirit. You know what the Bible says? He won’t speak of Himself. He’ll speak of Me, Jesus said. The focus of the Holy Spirit is not to focus on the Holy Spirit, but to put the spotlight on Christ. The Holy Spirit is in the background energizing the agent of creation, the one who caused the inspiration of the Scriptures. The one who regenerates hearts, but the focus is on Christ to the glory of God the Father. And so, He’s the one who reveals Jesus. And when you read the Bible, if you invite Him, He reveals Jesus.

Did you know I’m testing that right now? Do you know where I’m reading in the Bible? I’m reading in the Bible where it talks about the offal, and the call, and the liver, and separating, and this mold in the blood, and the issues of blood and the scabs, and you know where I am, Leviticus.

Do you know what? If you ask the Spirit of God will reveal Jesus in any part of the Scriptures, because Jesus said in Luke 24, all the Bible talks about Me. You can get a blessing out of any page of the Bible if you invite the Holy Spirit to reveal. In fact, usually if it’s very hard to understand, there’s something about Christ in there. Because He is the theme of the whole book, and the Spirit of God is the one who secures us.

See, the reason why a lot of people don’t feel saved, they don’t feel secure in their salvation. Either they’re not, or they are not living in such a way that the Spirit of God can make them feel His ministry. You know why? We’re going to see that next time, Lord willing. He gets grieved and quenched. The Spirit of God is a person.

He gets grieved and quenched by our behavior because He lives inside of us. It’s like having someone living in the back bedroom of your house that you refuse to acknowledge is there other than now and then, and they start feeling like you don’t want me here. And when the Holy Spirit is grieved and quenched, we don’t feel secure.

We don’t have the joy of our salvation when He’s grieved and quenched, and He is the one that, as it says in 2 Corinthians 1:22, now He is the down payment. He’s the engagement ring of our salvation. He’s the one that sealed us. And keeps us from Satan being able to enter, and to deceive, and to come in and corrupt us.

He seals us. We’re kept by the Spirit of God, and also it’s the Spirit of God who makes us brand new. Titus 3:5 says, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is every day resetting us. My, I have a iPhone 4, and I think they’re on 6 now, and probably there’s one in the works beyond that, and mine is getting old and tired, and you know what? It regularly gets mixed up and shuts off or spins, and I have to hold down the power button until it goes to sleep.

Yeah. Then I wake it back up with the power button and it fixes itself. It needs to be reset. We regularly need to invite the Spirit of God to make us brand new, to reset us to the original settings, to hunger after Him, too long because we love Him not to grieve and quench Him and to surrender.

In fact, we’ll see in just a moment that our lives are, if this platform was a plot of ground, the Holy Spirit in any part of our life that He is given access to by us surrendering, He plants something that grows. And you know what that’s called? The fruit of the Spirit. It’s the fruit of the Spirit flourishes in any part of our life that we have given up and over and surrendered to Him. That’s what He wants to do. He makes us brand new. He takes that thorny, stony, fallow ground, and He brings forth life. It’s a byproduct of our salvation. It’s a Spirit of God who cleanses our minds.

Now, let’s turn there. I don’t know where you guys probably still in Genesis, but let’s look for just a minute at Hebrews 9, because this is where I look across the table and I say, and primarily 99, no, about 95% of the time I disciple men. Of course, I have daughters and a wife, so I spend a lot of time discipling ladies. But the Biblical pattern is Titus 2 women nurture and disciple women, and Titus 2 men nurture and disciple men, and you don’t have a lot of this cross-pollination, which you know, really protects the church because when you nurture and disciple someone, you have a growing attachment to them.

And that’s why women counsel and disciple women, and men counsel and disciple men and that is vital. Of course, though, now with all of our sexual disorientation, everything is dangerous nowadays, but not if you’re in the Spirit and this is what it says. Turn your Bibles to Hebrews 9:14.

I actually have them mark this, and what I say is, this is vital for you to know, because the Spirit is the one who cleanses our minds. What is our mind? Our mind is our connection to the spirit world. Our mind is like wifi. Wifi opens up an unseen world, and we can see things out there that we couldn’t see without it.

And it opens to us the ability to get things from this unseen world that we need or want and send things to the unseen world. What is all that? That’s all that interface between the physical world (here, where we live), this world of weather and pain and needing to pay bills, the physical world, and the spiritual world is connected with our mind. The mind is the interface to the spirit world. That’s why we’re supposed to guard our minds. We’re supposed to wear the helmet of salvation that protects our minds. So, it’s the Spirit of God, the one who already has sealed us, who keeps our minds clean.

Bonnie and I just flew back. I was, I told you I was teaching at Bible Institute, and we had about four flights and, I don’t know if she noticed, but I noticed unusually how many people didn’t touch anything in the airplanes, and they’d sit down in their seat. Now, it comes a white piece. And they’re wiping everything off. These the antibacterial things, and they’re using paper to open door. It’s just like the whole country is just all a little on edge about, how close this close and who has it, and now they’re trapped on the cruise boat. I guess the boat got back and the 4,000 are released, but it’s just, we’re so aware of some pathogens. God says, if you allow into your mind, what does the verse say? How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God? Hebrews 9:14. Are you reading it? Do you see what it says? It’s talking about the three persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And it says, how much more shall the blood of Christ, the Son, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God? The Holy Spirit took the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and offered it to the Father.

What does it say the rest of the verse? To purge your consciences from things that lead to death. What is that? Did you know that just as much as, I read an interesting study this week. A company was hired in Manhattan by the corporation, and everybody knew it was going to happen. They just didn’t know when, but they were hired to infect an entire office building with a virus. Now, it was a harmless virus that doesn’t make anything bad happen. There are harmless viruses, and they came in when no one knew, and they only put the virus on the doors entering into the building. And everybody came in the way they always come in, and some came in, touched the door, and touched the coffee pot handle. Those people, they, before they even worked, they’ve got to start the coffee. Other people went right from the doors to the restrooms. And there were people like that. It’s like they come to work to go to the bathroom, okay. And so, they picked it up on the handles and took it into the bathroom. The others picked it up and took it into the break room. Others went right to work at their keyboards, but as they were sitting at their keyboards about 16 times an hour, we as humans do this. Six, about every four minutes, we’re touching a port of entry into our body. Yes. And so, before the end of the day, everyone in the office was infected. Now, it was harmless and nobody died, and they didn’t even have a runny nose, but they tested the blood. It was willing, they got paid and it was fun. But what they found is if we are not vigilant, we get infected.

You know what the Bible says? Whatever things are true, honest, just pure, lovely, and good report. Let those things into your mind. That’s Philippians 4:8. Do you know what it says? Whenever we are not doing what is true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report and thinking on those things, we’re infecting our minds.

Just like the office building in Manhattan, and we’re getting a virus that grieves and quenches the Spirit of God. And when He’s grieved and quenched, the Bible doesn’t make any sense. We can’t tell where we’re going. It’s kind of like having your windshield fog up instantly, and you can’t see anything or having a huge rainstorm where the wipers can’t keep up and you have to immediately slow down and start pulling over.

You don’t know where you are. Did you know when we get infected with things that aren’t true and aren’t honest, and aren’t just, aren’t pure, and aren’t lovely and aren’t of good report? It fogs the window. We can’t see where we’re going spiritually. We can’t hear the voice of God. We don’t feel like we’re related to Him anymore, and so the Holy Spirit is the one when we pull over and say, whoa, I don’t feel close to you,

I can’t understand the Bible. I don’t even want to pray. I feel far away. I don’t even feel saved. Hebrews 9:14. How much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God? That’s a past event right here. That was AD 30 that took place. But it says He, today, can purge your minds, your consciences, from anything that’s a pathogen that leads to death.

And then, by the way, you know what the twin verse is? If you write in your Bible, you ought to put a little arrow. The twin verse to this is Hebrews 10:22. And it says, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our minds sprinkled and our bodies washed with pure water, which is the Word of God.

And so, what it says is that no matter how far away from the Lord, it’s only one step back as we invite Him to cleanse our minds and we can draw near to Him again in full assurance that we’re welcomed. And that’s all a work of the Holy Spirit. Every bit of that. And He does that in our life when we give Him access.

It’s kind of like yesterday we were trying to transfer a big file between me and one of my children, and they said, oh Dad, this and that. And I said, why don’t you just open up, let me connect to your computer. I’ll just pull it across. Oh, yeah, fine. Did you know that’s what the Lord is saying? Just open up. It. I’d like to come in and cleanse that part of your life. I’d like to come and plant the fruit of the Spirit in that part, and that part, and that part. I just want to; I want to work inside of you. The Spirit of God is the one who calls us homeward to Heaven, and that’s why assurance of salvation, that’s how the Bible ends the Spirit, and the brides say, come. Let him that is athirst to come and drink of the water of life freely.

So, after we go through that, I talk about the work of the Holy Spirit.

And I say that the work of the Holy Spirit is He is in the life altering, personality changing business. Those are the things that the Spirit of God does if He enters us.

And it’s almost time to go. So, I’ll give you a preview, if you come back for coffee next week, and the Lord doesn’t return, and we’re still alive, and all of the Ebola gets stymied, this is the text we open to, and they are patiently usually sitting there on the coffee table waiting for me to get there.

Some people, once they open, they never move, and when I finally say, look at Galatians 5, they get so excited and I say, look at this, the works of the flesh, Galatians 5:19-21. That’s how we were born. That’s our original settings. That’s the original operating system of our lives, and this is what happens the longer we live in the flesh, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, and revelries, and the like. That’s seventeen manifestations of the flesh. This is the Majority text, or it’s called the Western or the Byzantine text.

Now, this is a great opportunity I’m not teaching about this morning, but I will for a moment. These two are from the Eastern text, or the Minority, or the Alexandrian and that whole thing. It’s the Eastern text. This is called the Critical text. New American, English Standard, NIV, original NIV before they started doing all the neutering and everything of it, and the Muslim friendly, and the homosexual friendly, and the feminist friendly versions, which the NIV is owned by Fox Broadcasting, and they’re purely for profit. And if they can make the Bible say what you want, they’ll do it. The new NIVs, that it’s just the direction publishing’s going, but forget all that because I don’t want to tie that in with this. The English Standard and the New American follow, the Eastern Minority Alexandrian Critical text. What that means is the rule is that it’s better according to them if it’s older and shorter. That’s the two rules. The older the text is and the shorter it is, they think it’s better.

And that’s fine. And by the way, that’s the direction Christendom is going. But let me show you where Christendom’s been, and why I’m an old fogey and I stay over on this side. Not because I believe this is the Bible and that’s not. For this reason. Simple church history lesson. If you measure the sermons, the actual recorded sermons, of century 2 through century 6+ of the early church. Okay, so we’re talking about old church fathers, ante-Nicene fathers and post-Nicene fathers and all of that post-apostolic literature. After John is gone in Patmos from the second century onward, there are thousands of sermons. That are extant, that means they’re still out there, they’re copies of them here and there, and scientists have taken those sermons and analyzed them and looked at the verses.

It’s, do you notice how many verses I’ve either quoted or printed? And these were transcribed sermons that people out in the audience wrote down. And they’ve looked at all those sermons and they’ve gauged them. And what they found out is that two-thirds of the sermons, the person preaching was reading from group A of manuscripts and one-third of the pastors were reading from group B. You can tell what Bible they were reading from what version, just like you could with me. Now, look at this. The two-thirds is here. Two-thirds of all recorded sermons. It’s 60… I don’t know, 63% of all existing sermons from the first 6 centuries of the church are from the Majority Western Byzantine text. One-third are from here. Both were Christians. Both were the Bible.

What’s the difference? I’ll show you on this page, right here. The only differences between the two manuscripts are these two words. You see those two words? That’s the 17 works of flesh. They only have 15 on this side. You notice that there is no adultery here, which would’ve been right there, and there’s no murder. It would’ve been right there, and is that a huge difference? No. Adultery and murder show up in many other places, and so there’s really not a concern, but I’d prefer, just my own personal preference, to side with the pastors of the first 6 centuries that went this direction, but that’s the works of the flesh.

Next time we come back, we’re going to look at this, the fruit of the Spirit. See, when the Spirit of God moves into my life, He alters my personality. I stop being driven and dominated by the flesh, and I don’t have envy, and outbursts of wrath, and jealousies, and immorality, and carousing, and orgies. Instead, I love the Lord so much, and His presence fills me so much, I start changing. I start acting like Christ. That’s why the early believers began to be called in Acts 11. Christ ones. Christians. And when we come back next time, we will look at how the fruit of the Spirit shows up in our relationship with God. We have an absence of selfishness. We have a release from our circumstances.

We have an internal serenity. Then the Spirit of God spills over into our lives and starts changing the way we treat other people.

And what shows up in our lives is that we have a long suffering, patience. We don’t get irritated at the actions of others. And they look at us and they go, you’re not going to, you’re not going to do anything? They go. They go, what’s wrong with you? They say, Spirit of God, or I’d punch you, on and on.

And finally we’ll see in our private life, and all of that, and let me get to the end because it’s time to go. I really get spoiled when I travel because especially when I’m overseas, they don’t have clocks over there. They just say, go as long as you want. I said, are you serious? They say, yeah, go. Okay.

We need the Spirit’s power to follow God. We can’t follow God this week. You can’t follow the Lord in anything you’ve heard, whatever part you remember, without the Holy Spirit. Secondly, we need the Spirit’s power, or we grieve God. God’s looking at the field of our life and He sees all the patches we are not giving to Him. That grieves Him, and we need the Spirit of God to constantly renew us.

So, this is how we’re going to end. It’s 11:46. Let’s all stand. And what I’d like you to do, three weeks ago or so, our group, we were up in Jerusalem, in Mount Zion, in the upper room, and we read all the Scriptures outside and we marched inside, and it was remarkably empty. We were the only group up there. And I said, hey, let’s just do the day of Pentecost and let’s pray and sing this song. And while we were singing it, the police ran in with whistles. And I thought, was there a riot outside? I said, sing a little louder. I thought they were dealing with someone else, not us. On our second time through our guide went over to see the policemen blowing the whistle while we were singing, and the policemen said the Muslims and the Orthodox Jews are offended when you Christians sing loudly, or at all up here in the upper room. So, you may not sing up here. And you know what our guide said? You’re the last group that got to sing. Because now we came in the back door. In the front door. They say you may not sing or pray loudly in the upper room. It offends the Muslims and the, the Orthodox that are all around. What we were doing up there is what we need to do before we go.

Did you know you can’t have love, joy, peace without the Holy Spirit of God and He only plants in places we surrender to Him. We surrender, He moves in. This song, and I hope many of you know it. Spirit of living God, fall fresh on me, melt me, mold me, fill me, use me, is an invitation. And you can either sing it to get it over with because you want to go to lunch, or you can make it an invitation and say, I need love in this part of my life. I need patience here. I need your gentleness at work. It’s just, you can apply it any way, or He can apply it any way you allow Him to. Okay. Let’s just bow before the Lord and sing this as our prayer before we go.

Spirit of the living God fall fresh on me.

Spirit of the living God on fall fresh on me.

Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.

Spirit of the living God fall fresh on me.

And Father, you’ve heard our prayer, and I pray in Jesus’ name that You would find access to more and more of our lives today and every day that we invite You in. In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, and all God’s people said, amen. God bless you as you go.

Notes