The Holy Spirit

SERMON: 2016-09-11--ac16160--the-holy-spirit-part-3 SOURCE DURATION: 00:48:47.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with devotional praise and continues through theological exposition, Scripture reading (Ephesians), pastoral application, and concludes with a formal prayer/benediction, all of which are integral parts of the sermon. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Amazing love how can it be that you my king would die for me amazing love I know it's true it is my joy to honor you in all I do I honor you we don't always fully measure up to that do we but the desire to do that and the progressive steps towards that is a function of our growth in craze in in grace and is dependent on our revelation of who we are in Christ and last week I asked you to do a little bit of homework and read a good portion of Paul's first letter to the book of Ephesians and I want to read with you now the first 14 verses of that and just to put the book of Ephesians in context it's been eight years now since Paul was in Ephesus on his third missionary journey in those years he's done a lot of traveling he has finished his third missionary journey went back to Jerusalem was taken prisoner and is now in Rome and while he is a prisoner in Rome eight years approximately later he is writing to the Ephesian Church and this is what he says to them let's read it together Paul an apostle of Christ by the will of God to the Saints in Ephesus notice what he calls them Saints that is people set apart for God the faithful in Christ Jesus grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and then he goes into this praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us into heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ for it shows us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight in love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the one he loves in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding and he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfillment to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head even Christ in him we were also chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will in order that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory and you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation having believed you were marked in him with a seal the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory this is the word of the Lord pray with me father it's our collective prayer this morning that you would open the eyes of our hearts and that you would show us afresh who in Christ we are what are the unsearchable blessings in Christ laid up for us in heavenly places made real in our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit so Lord we pray that you will penetrate the darkness that so much surrounds this world and that sometimes even surrounds our own lives and that you will give us but a glimpse of your glory because having received a glimpse of your glory father we cannot but fall flat on our faces and praise you for who you are and what you have done so bless us in these moments together give me the words that I need and all of us here hearts and lives to receive it and understand it and to embrace it and to leave it out father to the end that we might really be the first fruits of a new harvest we pray it for your glory in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ amen well we saw last week that the job of the Holy Spirit is to make real in our lives God's plan of redemption accomplished for us by the Lord Jesus Christ and if God is the Father who wants to see is restored to himself restore to his image so that he can bless us with his blessings and if Jesus is the agent who by his incarnation death resurrection and ascension made it possible for us to be restored to God the Father then the Holy Spirit is the one who works it out in the real world in time and space and so last week we look together at the first of three ways in which the Holy Spirit does this working out of our salvation he does it we saw last week first and foremost by bringing us to faith in Jesus Jesus said nobody can come to the Father unless nobody can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him that drawing happens by the Holy Spirit we saw last week there are three phases to that drawing it begins with making us aware of our true condition our true condition is one of sin and misery our true condition is one of alienation from God our true condition is an inability to measure up to his standard we are dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked a terrible message but it sets the stage for the revelation of Jesus and that's the second thing the Holy Spirit does is he allows us to hear the gospel he allows us to understand the gospel and then eventually he brings us to a place where using last week's illustration of Blondin and the highwire activist we can actually step into the wheelbarrow and trust Christ to take us across and to restore us into the presence of God I love the way that John puts it in John's gospel we've read these verses before he came to that which was his own that is to say the Lord Jesus came to the people of Israel but his own did not receive him but to all who received him to those who believed in his name he gave the right or the power or the authority is the word to become children of God children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband's will but born of God we call this the new birth and just as a baby is born into this world we'll see later on and have the skills to interface with this world the new birth means we are born into a spiritual world and we are given the spiritual skills to interface with the spiritual world that's where the Christian life really begins to take off and that is the first phase of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives which brings us this morning then to a second thing the Holy Spirit does and that is he imparts to us the benefits that we have in Christ Jesus there's a hymn that we have sometimes sung here in the past really captures the essence of this how vast the benefits divine which we in Christ possess we are redeemed from sin and shame and call to holiness it is not for works that we have done these all to him we owe but he of his electing love salvation does bestow the Holy Spirit makes real in our lives the benefits that we have in Christ and that is what Paul means here in verse 3 which is really our text this morning where he says praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ three words in that little verse that are of critical importance for us to understand this morning let me walk you through them the first word is the word blessed or blessing praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing now to be blessed by God is to have his favor and to have the favor of God is not just to have nice things come our way in the course of living life the blessings here are the blessings of salvation that God has made available to us as we'll see in a moment in Christ Jesus our Lord in other words the blessings of which this passage speaks are the blessings whereby God takes us out of this world and moves us back into this world and notice the emphasis in the passage it has already taken place we are already blessed it's not something we have to earn it's not something that's going to happen simply in the future it is a present reality so that's the first word we need to note here the second word that we need to note here is the word in Christ notice how this continues if we can get that slide up for a moment please praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ 89 times in the New Testament the word the phrase in Christ occurs 85 of those 89 occur in the writings of the Apostle Paul and in addition to that in the book of Ephesians alone the phrase occurs 14 times and in the modified form of in him it occurs another 8 times you might get the idea that it's an important phrase to the Apostle Paul in Christ what does it mean to be in Christ well to be in Christ stands in contrast as you might imagine to being in Adam to be in Christ is to share the benefits that we have in Christ as opposed to the disadvantages that we have to being in Adam let me explain it this way for just a moment if we can get this chart up in Adam let me put the question this way why are we such miserable sinners I mean we are and if you don't think you are just ask you know somebody knows you really well the catechism tells us we are by nature prone to hate God and hate our neighbor doesn't mean to go around killing everybody but when push comes to shove by nature we do not want to obey God we do not want to trust him we do not want to go his way we want to go our way because we just don't believe that he can be trusted to really fundamentally take care of us and when push comes to shove no matter what kind of relationships we have when it really when we really have our back against the wall it is self-preservation and loving your neighbor goes out the window real fast why is that well the biblical message is because we are in Adam Adam sinned he was exiled from the garden you and I are the product of Adam and Eve sin and we share his sin nature and we share his rebellion that's why we need to be born again that's why we need to experience God's grace because no matter how hard we work at trying to be good in Adam we cannot be good we can only be good in Christ and when we come to faith in Jesus the blessings promised to Jesus are promised to us and that's why this verse is significant Romans 5 19 for justice through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners so also through obedience of the one man many will be made righteous notice the contrast the disobedience of the one gets us all in trouble the obedience of the other gets us into the blessings of God so we have here the blessings of God available to us in Christ the third thing I want us to note is that these blessings are spiritual praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ every spiritual blessing in Christ what does that mean well it means two things it means first of all if we can put that up it means first of all that the blessings are not first and foremost of this age of this world under the Old Covenant the blessings promised to Abraham and to his offspring were largely material God would bless them in the here and now that's not a bad thing the problem with a here and now is that it only lasts a lifetime if it lasts that long so under the New Covenant and hear me well under the New Covenant the promises of God are for all eternity which is going to be unveiled fully in the age that is to come so the spiritual blessings are blessings in heavenly places where they have already been given to Jesus and if it's hard to get our heads around that that illustrates why it is that we need the Holy Spirit to give us insight into these matters and that's the second meaning of the word spiritual it's mediated these blessings are mediated by the Holy Spirit it is the Holy Spirit who makes the blessings of Christ real in our lives helps us to understand them not only but helps us to actually experience them in such a way that the spiritual becomes more real if you will than the material world all around us and of course these blessings have an impact on the here and now we'll talk about that later how God helps us to live with the values of the coming kingdom in the world today that's one of the challenges of being Christian so here again in this short little verse we have this Trinitarian formula of God the Father who wants us to be his children and wants to bless us as his children we have those blessings mediated through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who by his death resurrection ascension and all the things that he went through has procured the way of salvation and then they're made real in your life and in my life by the Holy Spirit that's why it's so important to have a Trinitarian view of God if all you know of God as a father then all you know that he is probably far and distant and far removed from you if all you know is God the Son then yes you can rejoice in forgiveness and you can rejoice that one day you're going to go to heaven but it won't impact your whole life along if all you know is the Holy Spirit then all you are is feeling and experience oriented you need the father and the son and the Holy Spirit to get a full orbed picture of God's redemptive purposes did you notice in our reading of Ephesians 4 of Ephesians 1 how Paul is is so animated about God's people understanding that it's God's purpose to unite all things in heaven and on earth in the person of Jesus God has already accomplished it and he wants to make it real in your life and in my life by the work and by the power of the Holy Spirit so what does that look like because really that's where the rubber hits the road doesn't it well in the time that remains let me try to walk you through four areas that you can be in the lookout for where the Holy Spirit should be intersecting with your life to make real in your experience the blessings that you have in Christ it's a good way to test Paul writing to the Corinthians says test yourselves to see if you be in the faith now understand this is going to be different for everybody's life God meets us all the way that we are in and makes allowances for our personalities and all kinds of things that are unique to each one of us but these general principles ought to apply in one way or another to all of our lives to one degree or another so how do these spiritual blessings in Christ get experienced in your life and my life well the first way in which it manifests is that the Holy Spirit makes us alive spiritually listen again to these verses Ephesians 2 1 & 2 we've quoted them often here this is from the Revised Standard Version which I prefer for this verse because it's a little clearer you he made alive when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world following the prince of the power of the year the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience what's the first thing that happens when a new baby is born it has life outside of the mother's womb and because it has life outside of the mother's womb it now has the ability increasingly to begin interfacing with the world all around him or her and that's what happens when by faith we are joined to Jesus we're born anew we get new life and this life now can connect with the spiritual world it can connect with God we know that he becomes our father the gap between him and us has been crossed by Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit and our spiritual eyes get opened in ways they were not opened before and unless you experience that you don't know what that means anymore then if you've never been in love with anybody you can read all kinds of novels about love it all changes when you experience it in your own heart I will never forget when as a young man in college I was challenged and many of you know this story by some friends of mine had I ever really given my life to Jesus and I had never really thought about that very much because I like a lot of you here I grew up in a Christian family I grew up knowing all the Bible stories I I grew up believing the Bible stories believing the gospel in fact I was in college studying for the ministry and they said but have you ever given your life to Jesus I said well I don't know and they said well it's too important not to know why don't you make sure so seemed like a pretty good bet to me and I remember so clearly kneeling by my bedside that one night and saying Lord I think I've done this before but just in case I haven't I want to make sure that I do I want you to be my Savior and eventually for me it was a separate step later on I want you to be my Lord I want to be in the wheelbarrow I want you to cart me across because my salvation has to be in you and you alone now here's the interesting thing never felt a thing no bells that rang no angels that blew their trumpets no sense of oh my goodness the way to sin has rolled nothing nothing absolutely nothing but you know what as the days went by I knew something had changed I knew that I knew that I knew that God was my father I knew that I knew that they knew that he loved me and I knew that I knew that I was part of his kingdom and that I wanted to live for him and if you asked me to explain what happened I cannot explain it to you except that I knew I experienced a touch of God deep in my spirit the spiritual world became real in a way that it had ever been real before some of you know the story John Wesley founder of Methodism was an ordained Anglican minister had gone to the Americas to preach the gospel on the way back traveled across the ocean with a group of Moravians in the middle of a storm saw that they had an element of faith that he did not have he coveted what they had they proclaimed to him the need to put his faith and his trust in Christ alone they later said that it was hard to convert the Wesleyan brothers because the simple gospel was too hard for them to grasp but the story went on and eventually in his desperation John Wesley found his way into a little chapel service where the gospel was being proclaimed the place was called Aldersgate which is why the Methodists use that term we have a nursing home here called Aldersgate and here's what John Leslie wrote about his experience because in that moment the Holy Spirit got through to his heart in a way that had never happened before he said I felt my heart strangely warmed I felt I did trust in Christ Christ alone for salvation and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death transformed his life he went on to become an incredible revivalist preacher and it's been said that the Methodist movement in England prevented England from experiencing the kind of horrors of the French Revolution that took place on the continent first job the Holy Spirit is that he makes us alive we're born into the kingdom of God this is everybody's privilege in Christ this is not something reserved just for very special people it's for you and it's for me and we can claim it by faith as our eyes get opened to what in Christ are the riches of God you with me secondly our spiritual appetite increases the Holy Spirit increases our spiritual appetite Peter 1 Peter 2 verse 2 like newborn babies crave pure spiritual milk so that by yet you may grow up in your salvation I like that word crave like newborn babies crave pure spiritual milk the word crave means to have an intense longing what's one of the first indications when you bring a new baby home from the hospital that your baby is a healthy baby your baby gets hungry in fact it's pretty safe to say there are three things that babies do for the first number of weeks or months of their lives they sleep a lot they eat a lot and then they do that other thing that keeps you going with a washing machine right when a baby doesn't eat you know that you've got a problem on your hand well when you're born new into the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit is at work in your life one of the first things that you will become aware of is that there is a new hunger for God and a new hunger for spiritual things remember I said I experienced no sensation whatsoever when I prayed that little simple sinner's prayer but I so remember the transformation that I became aware of as time went on because suddenly I had a hunger for scripture that I had never had before hymns that I had sung all my life took on brand new meaning as I understood the words in a way that I had never understood them before because now they were part of my experience in fact I remember I remember looking at nature and this is this is something really weird I thought but I remember looking at nature and the grass was greener and the sky was bluer it was like something profoundly had changed in me because I had a new capacity to relate to God into the things that God had made and that ought to be the normal Christian experience and I'll even go so far as to say that's one of the most practical tests that you can have as to whether or not you really are in Christ and growing the way that you want to be growing is there a spiritual hunger when you've been away from God for a while is there something inside you that says I want to find my father back if you've been away from Christian community for a while is there something inside you that says I miss my brothers and my sisters when you've been away from prayer or scripture or or Christian things is there something inside you that says I'm getting hungry I want to know God I want to grow in my walk and in my relationship with God if that's not the case then you need to do some self-examination honestly you need to examine first of all did you ever hop in the wheelbarrow to get across to the other side by faith in Jesus if you didn't now is as good a time as any or if you did and you've lost your appetite have you been feeling your life with junk food have you have you quenched the Holy Spirit have you grieved the Holy Spirit have you lost your first love have you gone your own way in which case now is a very good time to repent and say Lord I've wandered I've allowed seen in my life I I have been rebellious I have allowed broken relationships to get in the way I I have I've gotten absorbed in the things of this world instead of the things of God please forgive me help me to get back on track and help me to find ways to get back on track the Holy Spirit makes us alive the Holy Spirit makes us hungry and then the Holy Spirit strengthens our faculties to serve God better listen again to what Peter says 1 Peter 2 2 like newborn babies crave pure spiritual milk so that by it you may grow up grow up in your salvation that you may grow up in your salvation when you first bring your baby home the baby's faculties are very undeveloped can't really see beyond what is it you know so many inches doesn't necessarily know its parents from a stranger has no muscle tone has no ability to think through life's complicated issues it's just there it's got life but that life is undeveloped and one of the great joys of parenting is you watch the potential that is present in that baby's life in the natural you watch it to come to expression and and eventually they learn to roll over and they learn to walk and you cheer them on and then you wish they never learned to walk because now you're running after them all the time they learn to move from milk to you know more solid food and they learn how walk and talk and and you begin to see their characters and their personalities take shape it's one of the joys of parenting is it not that's why watching children become adults is well challenging but tremendously exciting well spiritually the same thing is true Peter says as we drink of the milk of God's Word we will grow up in our salvation and let me take a moment or two to talk about this we've talked about this before but it's really really important the definition of salvation that I like is this that process whereby God in Christ through the Holy Spirit delivers us from sin and all of its consequences and restores us to himself and to all the benefits of his grace salvation is that whole journey from sin and the bondage to Satan and the lostness of our lives back into relationship and fellowship with God and without spending a lot of time on it for our purposes that process of salvation has three phases justification sanctification and glorification justification is just as if I had never sinned it is a positional place where whereby through faith in Christ from God's perspective we are already declared righteous we are already in his presence and there is nothing we can add to it and there's nothing that we can take away from it glorification is the completion of that process whereby at the end of time when Jesus comes back he changes our bodies he ushers in a new heaven and a new earth and he gives us the keys to the kingdom if justification is being adopted into his family then glorification is getting the keys to his Lamborghini and a deed to his whole enterprise that's where God's going with you and with me in between those two is this process called sanctification and that's the process whereby God through the Holy Spirit takes us out of the world in which we are still living and he moves us progressively into what in Christ we are these two circles always overlap because a Christian lives in two worlds on the one hand we're born into the eternal kingdom of our God and we are his children and every spiritual blessing in heavenly places is mined by faith and we all have those moments when through the Holy Spirit we just know that we know that we know that's the most important and beautiful thing in life and then you go home and you have a fight with your wife and the boss fires you and your car doesn't go and you discover we're very very much in this world and we have this tug-of-war don't we this tug-of-war between living by faith knowing that God is for us and and that he will provide for us and and then there are all the places where we don't trust him and all the places where we don't like what's happening and we have the spirit battling the flash and sanctification as you know is this lifelong journey whereby God through his Holy Spirit changes us from the inside out and he makes us more like Jesus so that we can be prepared for the day that we can actually be in the presence of God and we can receive the fullness of his blessing the Holy Spirit strengthens our faculties and so as you grow in Christ as you drink his word as you join with other people taking advantage of the means of grace you will find things changing on the inside your focus changes you begin to see God more clearly than you ever saw him before you will have moments when God just opens your eyes and all of a sudden you see in a new way what it means that God is your father or the Jesus is your Redeemer or that the Holy Spirit is your present command yet I don't know about you in my life they were three very distinct phases where I discovered who Jesus was who God was his father and who the Holy Spirit was but we can expect God to increase our spiritual faculties that's why Paul keeps on praying for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God so that our eyes may be open to seeing what we are we have this huge treasure with our name on it but if you don't know that your name is on it and that it is yours you can live like the proverbial pauper likewise our desires begin to change by nature we desire the world by nature we we were busy all day long thinking about how to keep body and soul together as comfortably as we can in the here and now but when the Holy Spirit is in you and upon you that begins to change because there is not only a new awareness of seeing but there's also a new desire to not sin isn't that true you grieve about your own sins in ways that you never used to grieve and things that you used to like you now hate and things that you used to hate you now begin to like because things are changing on the inside God is at work to will and to work for his good pleasure and he gives you new abilities new abilities to pray new desire to pray new ability to understand his word you move from milk to meat to solid food you your faculties change you learn to stand up against sin in a new way you begin to fight temptation in new ways I'll never forget as a young man certain sins that were plaguing my life after I had come to Christ the Lord began to convict me and I'll never forget the day when for the first time I experienced victory in an area of my life where I had never experienced victory before I'll tell you it is not hard to praise God when you discover that his power in you is more than your own power or the devil's power to pull you down you with me your life will change not all at once it's a lifelong journey but it's preparation for the age that is to come when we're gonna manage all of God's kingdom eternally on his behalf and so as we grow we learn to put off the old and we learn to put on the new here's how Paul describes it later on in Ephesians put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your minds put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness that's why if you read through the book of Ephesians and all of Paul's writings they follow the same pattern he begins by explaining to us who in Christ we are and what are the benefits that we have by our salvation and then he always brings it home to the way that we live since these things are true since you are seated with Christ in heavenly places now this is how God wants you to live this is how he wants you to relate to your spouse this is how he wants you to relate to your family this is how he wants you to relate to your boss this is how he wants you to relate to the government this is how he wants you to do life how you do life flows out of who in Christ you are and the more you grow in Christ the more you'll experience the Holy Spirit convicting you of things that you have always taken for granted as being okay and all of a sudden he says they're not okay and the Holy Spirit will come along and he will prompt you to step into new things and a new way so that you could live as a worthy child of God so here's the question since you've come to Christ have you experienced new life is there something in you that resonates with God in ways that maybe previously you did not since you come to Christ is there a hunger not all the time when you're filled you don't need to be hungry but do you get hungry hungry for God hungry for his word hungry for his people and have your faculties grown are you a better man woman today than you were a year ago five years ago ten years ago has your love for God intensified do you understand biblical community in a way that you never understood it before are you more able to forgive and to get over your slights and your injuries do you love more passionately and more deeply is your life a closer reflection of the things of God and I'm not laying this on you to make any of us feel guilty although a little guilt probably wouldn't hurt but to drive us to our knees and to say we've got all these riches in Christ let's embrace those riches let's invite him to do in us what he needs to do so that we can increasingly be a reflection of the values of heaven instead of the values of the earth you say I can't do it of course you can't but in Christ you can and in the power of the Holy Spirit you give him half a chance ask him to breathe on you the breath of God and he will do far more abundantly than all that you ask or think for his glory and for his kingdom let's pray together breathe on us Oh breath of God fill us with life in you till all this earthly part of us glows with your fire divine praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has in Christ blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world thank you father may our hearts overflow with gratitude and with praise [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:48:42.520; remove through 00:48:47.000] in Jesus name amen [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:48:47.000; resume after this marked segment]