God the Holy Spirit His Indwelling and Sealing

Okay, as you all know, we're approaching this study with respect to the Holy Spirit a little differently than what's presented in Dr. Chaffer's book. So what we've been looking at these last couple of weeks, and in fact the next two weeks, is God the Holy Spirit and his ministries to the church. we looked at his completed ministries.

And those ministries that occurred the moment we put our trust and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the moment that happened, we looked at the entire list of those ministries that happened. The fact that we were sealed, that we were baptized, that we were justified, etc. But there was that whole list. And we looked at just a couple of those ministries last week in terms of the fact that we were regenerated, that we were baptized, that we were identified into the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We were put into that living union with Him and we were baptized or immersed into His death, His burial, His resurrection, His ascension, and even His seating.

And so we've got this glorious position in Christ And the moment that we believed, he blessed us with every spiritual blessing that's in the heavenlies. He made us totally complete in Christ. And as you look at that passage in scripture in Colossians, in terms of our completeness in Christ, it says that we're totally filled up. There's not one thing that needs to be added, that we're totally complete. So here we are, as believers in Christ, in the moment that we believe that we're totally complete. And the Lord Jesus Christ, at the moment we believed, gave us His very glory. So here we are in this wonderful position.

The problem is the fact that we don't know who we are. The moment that you believed, and the week later, and two months later, and a year later, you had no clue as to who you are in Christ, and all that Christ has done. But that's our position in Christ. Independent of whether you know it, whether you believe it, it's a fact. It's happened.

Now, that's the Holy Spirit's completed ministry. Now there is his continuing ministries. And the purpose of his continuing ministries is for our spiritual growth, for us as believers then to understand who we are and who he is. And as a result of his continuing ministries, the gap between our walk or our condition and our glorious position will narrow. Because the purpose, the Holy Spirit's purpose, is to reveal to us the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who He is and who we are in Him. And as He reveals that to us, and then we, by faith, believe that, and incorporate that, or appropriate those truths in our lives by faith, then we grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We then start to be conformed to His image, so that our walk, condition starts to approach our position. The gap will never be closed until we get to be with the Lord.

So, that's what's happening in your life and that's what's happening in my life. Now, what we said in this study, I probably have these out of order. As we've looked at these continuing ministries, which is for spiritual growth, and the key in all of this is that is that Christ shares his very glory with you, with me, and then he manifests, as he shares that glory, he manifests his very glory through you and through me. So here is just a partial list of those ministries of the Holy Spirit where he shares the very glory of the Lord Jesus Christ with you, even though positionally You have them.

Now, conditionally, we're starting to find out what they are and who we are. Oftentimes, in our life, we kind of go along sad, dumb, and happy. You know, things are going along well. We've made the right investments and we have a home and we have a new car. and things are going along okay, and there's nobody that's ill in the family, and there's no big problems. And guess what?

When we're in that, let me speak of myself, when I'm in that situation, I tend not to think about the Lord that much. It's like, you know, I'm doing okay. The focus is on me and not the Lord. The Lord has a unique way in your life and my life in creating a need. He creates a need in your life, in my life, for us to start being dependent and thinking about Him. Because normally, the old man, the last thing the old man wants to do is think about the Lord. So, He creates a need in our life. You know how He does it? Exactly. He puts old trials in our life and then we stop and think. And of course the first thing is, oh Lord, what's happening? What are you doing? And why are you doing this? Are you punishing me?

We go through this whole litany of things in our minds that he doesn't love me anymore, etc. and maybe I've got to do more for Him to please Him, and maybe He's not pleased with me anymore, or maybe I'm not as acceptable to Him anymore. But those are the thoughts that go through our mind. And the thing is this, that as we look at our position in the Lord Jesus Christ, last week we looked at our identification with Christ. that we are identified in the person of Christ, put into a living union with him, into his death, burial, resurrection. And God says, so if we're trying to please God in some way, or we think that we're not pleasing him enough, God comes at us with his word. And he says, this is my son. This is my beloved son. in whom I am well pleased." Well, if he's well pleased with the Lord Jesus Christ, guess what? Who else is he pleased with? Us. Why? He's totally pleased with us. Why?

Well, because we're in Christ. As we looked last week, you can't separate us from Christ. If he's pleased with Christ, he's pleased with us. And are we acceptable? Are we less acceptable now than at any other time? No, we're totally acceptable, because we're accepted, as Ephesians says, in the Beloved One, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our acceptance is in Christ, and so we're in this living union with Christ, totally accepted.

Okay, so now, God needs to remind us of who we are, and He has to remind us of these things, because we tend to veer off. So, there are trials in our life. I want you to turn to Romans chapter 5, and what I want to do this morning is show you how how the Spirit of God shares Christ's very glory with us through trials, and looking at at least one of the purposes of the trial. In verse 1, it says, Therefore, being justified by faith We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Here's a positional verse. Here's our position in Christ.

This is when it says, therefore, being justified is a perfect tense. You could translate it, therefore, having been justified. It's a passive voice. It says that you didn't actively do anything in that process. But you received the justification. Justification means what? It says that we're justified. So you look at the word justification. What does it mean? Just like death always means what? Separation. Justification, always think of righteousness, to be declared righteous, totally righteous.

So we're justified, we're declared totally righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice a little preposition there. We have peace, and it says with God. And a little preposition there, pros, means face-to-face peace. And there's two kinds of peace that scripture talks about. which is a face-to-face peace with God, and then there's the peace of God, His peace that permeates our life, that surpasses all understanding, as Philippians says.

Okay, so here's our glorious position in the Lord Jesus Christ, and verse 2 gives us another indication of what our position is, by whom, talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, also we have access, by faith, into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." So we have this access into His grace. In verse 3 it says, and not only so, but we glory, or we rejoice, this is the same word in verse 2, we rejoice In what?

Tribulation or trials. Also knowing that tribulation works patience. Let me ask you a question. When a trial comes along and the stock market drops 30% and your 401k goes like this or whatever, do you rejoice about that? Do you glory about that? Oh, isn't it wonderful? Are you rejoicing in that? But it says, look what it says. It says that we are rejoicing in tribulation and in trial. How do you do that? I really don't feel that way anymore. I don't. Okay. Alright. That's an excellent question. Excellent question. How does that happen? Okay. Let's take a look to try and understand how that happens.

So here's the picture. that it talks about our position, the fact that we're justified, we've been led into God's grace in which we stand, and we are in God's grace, never to be taken out of God's grace is our standing, and we are rejoicing in the hope, in the absolute certainty that comes out from the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's certainty. He's absolute certainty. And we can rejoice in who He is. So that's the first part of the picture.

Then it goes on to say that we continue rejoicing, here comes the trial, and there hasn't been a heartbeat missed, there comes the trial, and we continue on rejoicing. Well, how can that possibly be? Right? How do you do that? The only way, the only way, is that the reason why we're rejoicing in terms of the hope is because we believe that by faith.

We're resting in that. We're totally resting in that. And so we can rejoice in that. And we're beholding the Lord Jesus Christ. We'll talk about this beholding in a minute. But because we're resting in this absolute certainty, we can rejoice. Now here comes the 30% drop in the stock market, and we start thinking about our 401Ks, or whatever, or a child gets sick, or whatever the trial is. It is difficult to rejoice. So, looking at this picture, what would be the difficulty? Why wouldn't we be rejoicing when the trial comes? What would be absent?

Okay. So then what happens is our focus turns inward to self, right? Did you guys have a fight last night or something? So that's exactly what happens, is our focus gets off of the one whose absolute certainty And the focus goes back, goes on to self, or goes on to the circumstance. The focus turns from here to here, to the circumstance. And so then what happens, we're allowing the circumstance, whatever that is, to be the one that we're focused on. And we've lost this focus. And so once the focus goes here to the trial and to the circumstance and on us, then we go from a position of rest or a state of rest to unrest. in your life and in my life, if our focus is not here and here all the time, this is rest. Any other focus is unrest. And so what happens? So when we start focusing on the circumstance, then comes the worry. Then comes the fear. Then comes the anxiety. Then comes the bitterness. Why didn't I do this? Why didn't I do that? I should have done this and I should have done that. Then comes all of those conditional things. We say that if we did this or if we did that, then this wouldn't have happened.

No. God has allowed this to happen. He's allowed it to happen. It's interesting how God allows circumstances and trials to come into our life to show us where our focus really is. And it's a wonderful thing. Trials come into your life. I don't know how to say this, but it's the most wonderful thing that can happen to you. Do you believe me? You don't believe me, I can tell. And it's the most wonderful thing that can happen to you, because let's look at the rest of the passage.

So in verse 3 it says, And not only so, but we glory in tribulation, also knowing that tribulation works patience. So God has a purpose in the trial. And he says, it works patience, hupo mone, to abide under. It's a staying power. Let me ask a question. Whose patience is this? Is it yours? Or is it the Lord's? It's not yours. You ain't got it. I ain't got it, you don't have it.

But when he brings the trial and we're focused on him and resting in him in the circumstances, then he works through us his patience. We start to understand, we start to sense what he's all about, that he has this and only He can provide that patience.

And then it goes on to say in verse 4, and patience works something else. It works experience and experience hope. So this patience works experience. And another translation, does anybody have another translation for experience? I'm looking at the King James. Patients work what? Proven character. Okay. Or tried character. And the word here in the Greek is the word dakimos. It's something that is... Dakimos is used where you take gold ore and you want to test it, you want to prove it to see whether it's 98% or if it's 90%, you know. So what do you do? How do you get the gold out of the ore? How do you get the pure stuff out of the ore? You subject it to heat. You subject it to a trial. And it gets rid of all the impurities. And what you come out with is pure stuff. And so that's what this process is. And the tried character is not your character.

It's the very character of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's who He is. And then we come to find out who He is. And the Holy Spirit is revealing to us His patience, the totality of His character. And that tri-character then works. hope. It has a goal. It has a goal that takes us back to hope. It takes us back to the absolute certainty who the Lord Jesus Christ is.

Now, question. Is this a vicious cycle that we go through day in and day out or year in and year out? Is this the way it goes? So God's purpose in the trial is to share Christ's glory with you and through you. So this is that sharing of Christ's glory. You've come to understand His patience, His character. This whole process is a growth process.

So we're looking at it from a top-down view. As an engineer, you have to look at it from a different view. So now we have to look at it from a different view to see really what's happening. So as you look at it from a different view, when we start out here, as brand new babes in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Actually, it should be a point, because we know nothing of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We know very little. But as time goes on, He presents the trial to us. And He wants us to walk by faith in that trial. And He reveals to us His patience, the staying power through the trial. And reveals to us the very character of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it comes back to hope. And in our life, this is what happens. year in, year out. It may be day in, day out for some of us. But there are these trials.

And what happens is every time we go through that cycle, we come to know a little bit more about the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is infinite, and I can't draw it infinite, but His glory is infinite. And we come to know His glory. So we start out here in the new birth and you can see that this is spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is coming to know Him and growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And this is the conformity process, what He's doing in your life and my life, is forming Christ in you and in me, or conforming us to the very image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Make sense? But that's what's happening. Now, I want you to take a look at the next verse, at verse 5.

And it says, in hope, this absolute certainty that is from the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, maketh not ashamed. We can never be embarrassed by it, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us. And so, as we go through these trials, And as we rest and abide under that trial and see His patience and by faith rest in His patience, His character, we come back to hope and the Holy Spirit reveals to us this character a little bit more of His glory.

And then what happens is that we see God's purpose in that trial. We see His purpose and the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. The word shed abroad there means gushed out. We sense God's love, even though He's allowed us to go through the trial, through the circumstance, we see that it's the result of His love for us.

And one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is, early on, to reveal to us that God loves us. God loves us. Because oftentimes when trials come and circumstances come into our life, our first thoughts are, I don't think God loves me anymore. And it's the Spirit of God that confirms that love in our hearts. As we're going through the trial, we're talking about faith and just resting in terms of who He is and beholding Him.

I want you to turn over to 2 Corinthians 3.18. 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. The context that this is written in, go back up to verse 12, and let me read verse 18 in the context. seeing then that we have such hope. Isn't that neat? In terms of the hope and our hope is this absolute certainty.

We use great plainness of speech and not as Moses who put a veil over his face that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. But their minds were blinded. For until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament which veil is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.

Now, the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, there is freedom. We have the totality of freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are changed. or transformed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Talking about Moses, when he came down from the mount, he came down from the mount and If you remember the story, when Moses was up on the mount, Moses said to God, show me your glory. And God said to him, you can't see me, but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. You go in this cleft of the rock here, and I'm going to pass by you, and I'm going to put my hand over your eyes, and I'm going to pass by you. And the Lord does that and passes by him, And he sees this glory of the Lord.

And that glory penetrated Moses somehow. He came down from the mount. His face was just radiating from the glory of the Lord. And he told the children of Israel what the Lord had said. as time went on, that glory started to fade. So Moses picked up the veil and put it over his face so that they wouldn't see the fading glory. And he continued speaking to them. Then he went into the tent.

Now, aren't we taught differently? Aren't we taught that Moses put the veil over his face so that you can't see the glory? Isn't that normally the way it's taught? But if you go back to the Old Testament and read it carefully, you'll find that he puts the veil over his face so that they don't see the glory fading.

And then, when the glory is faded, he goes into the tent and the glory reappears. He's got the veil off of his face, and he goes and speaks to the children of Israel again. Now, it says, we with unveiled face, we don't have a veil on. And as all we with unveiled face beholding, as in a mirror, that we are looking in a mirror And we're looking at the glory of God.

Now, let me ask you a question. If you got up this morning, and either you shaved or else you fixed your hair if you were a woman, and you looked in the mirror, right? Now, did you see the glory of God in that mirror? I didn't. So the thing is this. A mirror reflects something. A mirror reflects the glory of God.

So what is the thing that reflects the glory of God? Okay, that's true. But what can we pick up? What can you pick up that reflects the glory of God? That you can see the glory of God? See in terms of perceive. His Word. So that we have no clue what His glory is apart from the Word of God. Because this is the only thing that reveals the person of Christ and His glory. So this is the mirror. So that we behold His glory through the Word, which is the mirror that reflects His glory.

And then this beholding, like over in John 1.14, that when it talks about the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So as you behold, you see His grace and His truth as you behold. And in John chapter 1, the verb there is theomai. And we get our word theater from it. We theater Him. Beholding, we theater Him.

And it's a beautiful work because when you go to a movie, and especially these movies that they have now, with these reclining seats and the Dolby 3D sound, and you then behold the screen and you start focusing in on a character. and you get absorbed and you start identifying with that character. And when that character is going through problems, you sense that. And if that character is sad, you're sad. And if that character is crying, you're crying. I mean, tears are rolling down your eyes because you so identify with that character.

Beholding Christ, this word beholding, is scrutinizing him. looking at Him, coming into this intimacy with the Lord as you behold Him through the Word. That's what this says. So as we behold Him, And His glory, it says that we're changed, we're transformed into the very same image from glory unto glory. So that on our overhead here, on our picture here, it's from glory to glory, ever increasing amounts of glory as we behold Him, as we come to see Him, to know Him. That's how the Spirit of God shares the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ with us. One of the ways is through trials. And it's a wonderful thing that can happen.

And when my kids call, they say, Dad, the sky is falling, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. I usually tell them, you know, that's wonderful. Dad, you don't understand. I just told you that the sky... No, no, you heard me right. Because I know, I know exactly what the Lord is doing. How do I know that? Okay, because he does the same thing to me, with me.

We're not getting very far, but I didn't plan to. As we said before, there's no way that Roger and I can go through all of the ministries of the Holy Spirit. And so what we're thinking of is maybe after this class is to is to go through some of these wonderful truths in more detail with respect to who we are in Christ. Nevertheless, I want to cover one this morning, one more, with respect to the Holy Spirit fills you.

Turn to Ephesians 5.18. And it says this, and be not drunk with wine in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. This is a command. It says, don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. The question is, what in the world does that mean? that were to be filled with the Spirit.

I remember when I first became a believer and I was so excited that I wanted to tell others about the Lord Jesus Christ. So I went to this evangelism meeting It was Campus Crusade for Christ, and Bill Bright was teaching us how to be witnesses for Christ. And he says, first you need to be filled with Spirit. And I said, I don't have a clue.

How do I get filled with Spirit? So he says, all those who want to be filled with the Spirit, stand up. Man, I jumped up. And so by that magical means of me jumping up, I was supposed to have been filled with the Spirit. So here's what he was teaching me, and this is what I thought, that if I determine in my mind I want to be filled with the Spirit, then the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is the content of the filling, right? So by me standing up, the Spirit, is going to fill me.

I don't know how much it was supposed to fill me that night, quarter, third, half, three quarters, full. So if the Holy Spirit is the content, and I'm being filled with the Spirit, how much of the Spirit am I being filled with? The key to this understanding, I think, this passage of Scripture is that the little preposition, with, to be filled with the Spirit, the preposition in the Greek is en, e-n, normally translated by our preposition in or by. So better to translate that to be filled by the Spirit.

And when you say by the Spirit, now the Spirit is not the content of the filling, but He becomes the agent of the filling. He becomes the one who's doing the filling. You see how that changes? Just that one little preposition changes the entire meaning of that verse of Scripture. It's either with or by. With He is He is the content of the filling.

If you translate it by, He becomes the agent of the filling. He becomes the one who fills you. Now, the question is, well, if we translate it by, and I think that's the right translation, if we translate it by the Spirit, then what's the content of the filling? What does He fill you with? Okay. It could be Himself. Turn. How we do this. Let me let me just do this very rapidly. The first bill is second. Oh, I got five minutes. as you look at your notes. So the question is, what's the content of the filling? It's the fullness of Christ, His glory. And you see how that is so consistent with all that we've seen so far in terms of God's purpose, and God's purpose to share His glory with us.

If that's God's purpose, then, and by the way, as you go back to John, chapter 16, you see that the purpose of the Spirit is not to focus on Himself. The purpose of the Spirit is to reveal the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, not Himself. So why would we be filled with Spirit? By the way, do you have the Spirit in you? We're indwelled with the Spirit. We don't need any more of the Spirit than we have. We've got the Spirit indwelling us, right?

Now, sometimes this passage of Scripture is translated with what this really means is that we're controlled by the Spirit. Don't think it means it's not a command to be controlled by the Spirit. It's not referring to the degree as to... If you translate it that the Holy Spirit is content, it's not talking about the degree of how much you're filled with the Spirit. But what it's talking about is that the content is the fullness of Christ.

So look at Ephesians 1.23. Take a look in the context in which this is written.

Ephesians 1.23. And it's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ in verse 22, "...and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all."

It's the Lord Jesus Christ who is the fullness of all in all. over the chapter 3 verse 16 and Paul is praying that that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that you may be that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passes all knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God you see where the filling is all of the fullness of God and all of the fullness of Christ, which is described in verses 16 through 19.

So, when anyone of a charismatic leaning comes to you and says to you, do you want to receive the second blessing? And do you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? You can tell them you've got all the filling that God wants you to have, and you are already blessed with every spiritual blessing. And the fact is that the Spirit of God is filling you with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen? Wow. First time for everything. That you thought I had that time. Any quick questions? We had some questions after class last week which were excellent. Let's close in a word of prayer. Father, we are just so thankful for your eternal purpose to share the very glory of the Lord Jesus Christ with us. And we thank you, Father, for the Spirit of God that reveals these wonderful truths to us. And just thinking back on what the Lord Jesus Christ said when He prayed to you just before he went to Calvary. He says, Father, the glory that you have given me, I have given them. And Father, we are so thankful for this unspeakable gift. And we thank you in Christ's precious name.