The Person and work of the Holy Spirit Lesson 5 start Q2

I forgot to write down last week where I stopped. Okay, question two. What were the convicting factors after the fall by the spirit? What did he do? What instrumentalities did he use? striving with man's conscience. That's really what I'm after. Well, there's the fall. There's the fall. The sin and judgment of God. Sin and judgment. Okay, let's stop there. So, man falls from his first estate.

God created the earth in such a way that it totally supported everything that man was and needed. And the word fall is a great word because he fell out of that environment and the environment changed. Now everything that was for him before this time, now was against him. And anybody who gets up in the morning and deals with the situations of a daily life recognize what that's all about. working, taking care of families, all that kind of thing.

The second thing the spirit is dealing with is the issue of sin. What's the definition of sin? Missing the mark. Missing the mark. So what's the mark? Jesus. So the mark is the Lord Jesus Christ. So at this point, the spirit is convicting the world Uh of sin that they are in a constant state of missing the mark.

Uh it seems uh when you say it that way because I think we look at sin as a bunch of bad stuff that we all do and uh you know, I had a bad thought about Courtney on Wednesday that I confess it, you know, but really Well, Thursday too. But that sin is a pervading issue in the life of the whole world, that the whole world is in sin, is in this missing the mark thing. And because of that, there's judgment. So the spirit of God is going around in this world. and dealing with the fall of man, with sin, and with the judgment of God, that there is a judgment. What were the two judgments that man, or one of the judgments that man got in the garden? Because he sinned, what was one of the things that God said, because you have done this, here's the consequence. You'll have to work the garden, because it's going to take, we get wheat. You have to work, yeah. You're going to have to go to work. Well, Adam was working already, wasn't he?

He was given the responsibility of dominion over the earth, and he was to take care of it. And he had a job to do. He was naming animals. He's a busy guy, you know? So what are the consequences of that? of, well, one of the consequences are that he had to go out and now fight to survive. He didn't have to do that before, so. And the animals were afraid of him then, I think. Well, or they wanted to eat him, one of the two. Actually, animals weren't afraid until after Noah got out of the ark.

I think you're right about that. It was the garden part. You didn't grow without the thorns and the weeds and the thistles. Now you have to figure out when you're going to fertilize and how you're going to overcome all the things. Yeah, that's kind of silly, but he got he got excommunicated from the garden. He got kicked out. Yeah, the sword. This wonderful spot where God put him. He's he's outside the gate now. So now he's got to live in Baghdad. Yeah.

You know, one of the churches I frequented, they said that God did not curse man he cursed the earth and he cursed satan but he did not curse man man just uh... you know i i don't know if that's true or not but uh... he'd i don't think i agree with you he didn't curse man but he but there were uh... there were consequences to him because of sin and like a consequence What's that?

What about Eve? Yeah, there's definitely a consequence with Eve with childbearing. Your pain will be greatly increased. Does that mean that there was a little bit of pain? I don't think they know because they didn't have any children at that point. So yeah, I mean, Adam is a, Adam is out there slaving every day now, and he doesn't know if he's going to be successful. Eve, when she has her first child, she said, I've got a man. And there was a lot of pain involved in that. So there's another rabbit there I could chase, but I'm not going to do it.

When she says, I've got a man, I think she thought he was the savior. Yeah, I think so. I think she did. That's pretty cool. She was looking for a savior right there. That's right. Right then and there. Yeah, she thought nine months and then we could get an entrance back into the garden. No. Yeah. So the other job that the Holy Spirit had is his power and goodness leading men to repentance. He was convicting. He was dealing with the fall. But he was also, from the very beginning, working on man to change his mind.

Now, when Adam Cindy went and hid, and the Lord went after him and talked to him, the idea was that, do you think Adam repented? Do you think he changed his mind? What do you think? I think he did. Because I think we're touched. I think he's going to be in heaven with us. And he changed his mind. So what would indicate to you that he did? Well, he offered a lamb. I mean, he made sacrifice. It was something before that. He hid. What's that? He hid, initially. Well, he hid, but how did he clothe himself? He had to be at death. He wore the lambskin or whatever.

No, before that. It was the fig leaves and it wasn't sufficient for a covering. Fig leaves. And who brought him the lambskins? God did. Okay. And so what was that all about there? God said, you know, the leaves aren't good enough. You need to put on these lambskins. Where did the skins come from? From an animal. that had to die. So, what what was god showing Adam?

He was showing him that uh you know, without without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins and here's my remedy in comparison with God said, my remedy is a lamb slain and Adam said, okay, I'll put him on. That's when I think he uh repented. He accepted god's remedy. That's one of the big issues today and that's one of the big things that the spirit of god is always doing is showing god's remedy for man's sin and the issue is, will you accept his remedy or today.

And Mike, I also noticed that, uh, Adam says, uh, you will be the mother of all living to Eve. And I thought thinking about that, I mean, they had just come into death. They received the promise, the seed promise. And he right away recognizes the fact that that's the mother of all living. It's not just, you're the mother of the human race, but you're the mother of of the Messiah, that everyone in Christ has life, kind of the way I saw what he was saying there. Yeah, I think that's right, Miles, because there was a promise given for the woman's seed.

And the promise was the Messiah, that there will be a Redeemer. Hi, fellas. One of the other things that the write-out points out is that there was a witness of death. In other words, the write-out says, well calculated to call upon man to prepare to meet his God.

So now, you know, death has to be part of the equation where there wasn't any death before. Is that a big deal? We live in a world where death is around us every minute of every day. And before Adam sinned, there was no such thing as death. Nothing ever died. So all this work of the spirit was upon man's moral nature. It was the persuasion, as of man, only with divine wisdom and yearning to lead him from the paths of folly.

I don't think we realize that when Adam sinned, how much his moral compass went askew, how his view of things totally changed and how there was an opposing influence now that was really, really strong in him. And you eliminate the Holy Spirit right after Adam sinned, and he's totally depraved, don't you think? Because he's got a sin nature now. The sin nature is not a passive entity in a man.

It's aggressive. It's proactive all the time. And it's totally against God and anything that God has proposed. So question three is, what were the results of this striving? Take a look at what the writer has to say. He says, the earth was utterly corrupt, filled with violence. Every imagination of man's heart was only evil continually. Boy, that is such a condemnation of man, that every imagination of man's heart was only evil continually. You ever gone through a process like that in your own mind? where every imagination of your own mind was evil continually.

And if it didn't, you probably won't admit it. I'll admit it. Will do. I still have a problem with that. Yeah, who doesn't? I mean, that's the nature. That's all it does. Do you think it's changed at all? Say that again. Do you think it's changed at all since then? That's a great question. If you didn't hear Courtney, he asked, do you think the sin nature has changed at all?

Yeah, the influence... well, I should not use the word influence, but... and this is what we're studying. The Holy Spirit is... He doesn't just convict, and we'll talk about that in the next lesson here too, convict towards salvation, but He convicts towards sanctification as well. So, yeah, it's changed. Changed a lot. Yeah.

For a believer. But otherwise, no. You know, I think one of the things a growing believer has to come to grips with is the fact that his sin nature has not improved. This is not the sin nature improvement society. We're not going to get your sin nature to act like a Christian, no matter how many rules you give it. It is what it is. And so the only The remedy God had for the sin nature was what?

Death. Yeah. Regeneration. Crucifixion. That's it. Mike, going back to what I was trying to point out is that when we, as Rite-Ed said, it's basically totally evil. Every imagination of man's heart was only evil, utterly corrupt and filled with violence.

Is the sin nature in the unbeliever any different than that today? Everybody hear that question? It's the same. Is the sin nature any different in the unbeliever than in the believer today? Today or any other time. Right. I guess that's when you really think about, when you look at the world, you look at things, and what we see here in Adam hasn't changed. And it's just as evil when you look at the world and everything. It's every bit as evil. And that's kind of a sobering thought. What about political correctness?

Oh, that's a great question. Yeah. The sin of wokeness. Wokeness. Sure. Sure. What's the sin of wokeness? Obviously, you're not woke. It's not. It's kind of what's leading to all the cancel culture and everything and the tearing down of everything and just You know, the division, strife, everything, cancel. If you're woke, you suddenly have, you know, you're sensitive to everything, I think. You're intolerant. Intolerant, yeah.

That's kind of what we're seeing. Well, I think if you try to take a step back, conservatives look at liberals as being totally enmeshed in the sin nature, and they have the answer, right? that the liberals are running amok, totally controlled by the sin nature. And if they would just be a little bit more conservative, things would be better. Like a conservative sin nature is better than a liberal one. Give me a break. You should probably write that down. That's one of the best things I've heard you say. like a conservative sin nature is better than a liberal sin nature. Jimmy, you were going to say something. Go ahead.

Oh, I was going to say that at one point in my life I was pretty astonished to feel that my sin nature, even though I'm a believer, I look at some of my Some of my friends that are not believers, and I think my sin nature is worse than theirs. I am a believer. And I think that if we didn't have some really strong governmental rules over us, our sin natures would be, there's no telling what we would be doing to each other, or the world would be doing with each other. I think they're doing it now, they just don't report it.

The sin nature is destined to repeat itself, right? So regardless of where you stand or what you think, if you don't have the Holy Spirit, and we use the word governing, but more so pointing to the Lord Jesus is the idea there. It doesn't matter the word you use or the way that you go about what you're trying to accomplish. At the end of the day, it only has human nature, sin nature in mind. Yeah.

I think, Jimmy, a lot of the hungry hearts point out, I think the hardest thing when you're growing spiritually is to really understand how bad your sin nature is. So I think that it's a good process to start figuring out that you are every bit as bad in this sin nature as an unbeliever.

And that, you know, the Romans 7 where I think, you know, Paul is going through that where he wants to do what's good, but he can't. And what is his result? There's nothing good in my flesh. And I think that's the growing process, is understanding as believers.

We have two natures, the sin nature and then the new nature. But a lot of times, Christians just believe either a one nature, that we don't have the sin nature, or that we're so good that this sin nature is just kind of off to the side, but it's not. And I think identifying that as a key in a believer's spiritual growth Yeah, it takes a long time, but at some point you finally realize your sin nature is not, you can't improve it. You try to improve it for a long time as a Christian, and then you finally go, oh, you get it. Sometimes it takes years, and then you realize.

Well, that's, you know, even Paul, you know, look at Paul, like I said, he's, you know, the very foundation of how we find out about who we are in Christ, and yet he, nothing good dwells in my flesh. Yeah. The nothing part is the part that takes a long time. Yeah. And it's a real relief to see Paul say that, because then you realize that you're not worse, that you're matriculating just like Paul.

Your sin nature's not being improved, so you don't have to look at that anymore. The subtlety of a reformed theology is so that you can do things that sort of eliminate that no good thing. But you've got a couple of good things, and that's ridiculous. You've got to be set up, I think, by the spirit of God to recognize that in me that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells, not a thing. It puts me in a position of dependency that I wouldn't have otherwise have. You know, legalism doesn't make you dependent. Grace does. So there's a big humility factor with that as well. Yeah.

And I think it also goes where we've talked about before where, you know, we're in the tree of good and evil and we shimmy over to the good side and we think we're okay. Yeah. We're still in the tree of good. We're not in the tree of life. Yeah. That's right.

It's a recognition that, you know, as believers we are in the tree of life and the good and evil is not where we're at. And identifying good or identifying evil is, you know, if we're doing good things, that's not anything. Right. Yeah, I think that that's another one of those terrific revelations as you grow as a believer. We call it positional truth. You find out that, boy, I've been fighting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And maybe I'm aware of the tree of life and I'm trying to get in there if I can. And then you discover one day, wait a minute, I'm already there.

In my position in Christ, it's all been done. And that's a great revelation because it means that I don't have to work at getting there anymore. It's a tough thing because I got, if you're like me, you lost it every time. There's never a time that you had a victory over sin. I don't care what it is.

Mike, one last thing on that too. It's very evident even like what we're seeing in Adam here. When we say what is the result of the fall is work. What does the sin nature want us to do? Keep us right there. And that's when you come up with things that you have to work to do. That's the sin nature. And I think that, just think about that, that's really evident. What was the fall work? Well, that's all he's good for.

I was just going to kind of dovetail off that. Another word that we use often today is change. You need to change. How can you change and be different than you are? The way I've heard that a lot is the power to change. You have the power to change. You hear that one a lot? Yeah, totally. Well, from a reform standpoint, the whole idea of the giving of the Holy Spirit is to allow you to change. That's really what, you know, or to keep whatever rules that are presented, that he's the one that will help you keep them or keep them for you. The question is, because it's really closely, change is really closely related to work, because when you hear you need to change your behavior or your attitude or whatever it might be. What's the first thing that comes into mind? How do you change something? By my own willpower.

Okay. And that's exactly, that's works, right? Yes, it is. Yes. That's an interesting way of looking at it because we use softer words for the same exact works mentality. It's not your life. And so, if the Lord Jesus is living through you, you're not changing anything. Right. If you're trying to change yourself, then that's where you get bunged up. You're being transformed. Yeah. You are being transformed. Transformation is done to you. Done to you. Allowing God to transform us, allowing God to change us. I can't do it. Sorry, folks.

Nothing wrong with that. So question three and four are kind of leading up to the work of the spirit at the beginning. And what I wrote down for three was the earth was utterly corrupt and filled with violence. Judgment begat no terrors. Mercy and goodness produced no softening. They went on as ever, eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage until the flood came and destroyed them all. So the spirit of God was working then, they just weren't listening. So question four says, did this striving continue in Israel?

The Spirit's striving and the verses, Acts 751, you stiff neck and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. So this is a quote from our boy, Stephen, who was standing before the Sanhedrin and he's reviewing the history of Israel before them. under the promises and revelations of God. So he had shown that every fresh step in the unfolding of his purposes of love, God had been met with opposition. That's a really important point.

Because as you read the Old Testament, you find no matter what God does in grace, man opposes it. I was thinking the other day that Satan never had an original thought. you know, as brilliant as he is, he looks to see what God is doing, and he tries to duplicate it. He doesn't come up with any fresh ideas, but then he looks at what God has done, and he automatically thinks, well, I have to be against everything that God has done, every single thing. And I think that thought was in my mind because I was thinking about this gender identification nonsense that's going on. Well, God creates Adam and Eve, And Satan says, well, we have to be against that. So whatever God assigned a gender to you, that you get to decide, and you get to change it if you want to. What nonsense it is. Because any objective, clear-thinking person would think, really? I'm not a, you know? primary care physician of that question, and he's got a real short answer, you know?

So, Moses had been sent, the people had been brought out of Egypt, had been set in the land, the tabernacle had been established as a divine center. Well, when we were studying Exodus on Wednesday nights, the grace of God was so evident And God's desire was to be as close to the Jews as it could be. And they weren't interested in that. They were interested in a set of rules. that would make them self-righteous and have their own standing before God. That's all they cared about.

And from the time of the night of the death angel, all the way to the camping out of Mount Sinai, every single step of the Jews was done for them. They didn't do anything but walk. They were protected. They were fed. They were housed, everything. And yet, when they got there, Moses goes up in the mountains for 40 days and their faith lasted 39 days. At day 39, they got Aaron doing a golden calf. This is after God did incredible things for them that he didn't do for any other nation in the world ever. The kingdom was set up under David, a temple built by Solomon.

Each step had been taken after failure on their part to enjoy what had been previously bestowed. Each step afforded but the fresh occasion for them to resist the Holy Spirit. That is one of those axioms that are so true. Every step of grace that God presented to Israel, they resisted it no matter what it was.

They despised Moses. They set up the golden calf. They turned back in heart to Egypt. They failed to drive out the Gentiles on the land, brought there by Joshua. They despised the Lord's offering and compelled him to relinquish the tabernacle at Shiloh. The Old Testament is a testimony to the sin nature's irreconcilability to God. That's really what it's about. And God's testimony about that if man would just let him, he would bless them. He's a God of blessing. That's who he is. Not a God of vengeance, retribution. He's a God of blessing. That's what he likes.

So when the temple was built and Solomon reign of glory had been inaugurated, deeper apostasy marked both king and people. And the darkness deepened until the nation was carried away to Babylon. It's really interesting. God said to Solomon, what can I give you? And he said, wisdom. You would think, if you had God's wisdom, you wouldn't end up worshiping idols at the end of your life. But that's what he did.

This is like, man, give me a break with these guys. So. Mike, one of the words that you keep mentioning is the word resistance. Yeah. Yeah. Where does that resistance come from? Seems to be a pretty common thing. Well, let me ask that question. We have that resistance built into us, right? And it's in nature. What do you do about it when it shows up? Because it's there all the time. How do you deal with that pushback that's just in you? Take every thought captive? What's that? Take every thought captive? How do you do that? Well, walking in the spirit is a way to know God better and better and study his words. So you really, I don't know.

No, I mean, I'm not trying to pick on you, Russ. It's just that, you know. Courtney's about to say what I think he's going to say. Go for it. You want to go and say it? Yeah. It's faith. It is faith. It's what it is. Yeah. You have to believe this. But you know, the faith also goes back to the bedrock, which is Romans 6. Reckon yourself dead unto sin and alive unto God. That's the foundation, Christianity 101. I agree. But it always comes to, do you believe that? Do you believe you're dead to sin? Do you reckon yourself dead to sin, and the second part is alive unto God?

Well, and what's interesting about that is that when you first are introduced to the Roman sixth truth, you have to come to grips with the fact that did I really die? you know, and and I think I don't think you're first presented with with the fact that I was co crucified with Christ, that it's immediately accepted.

You have to think about that, you know, and I think that's part of what the spirit does, because he's not going to, you're not going to enter into that emotionally and quickly, you have to be clear about what he's saying. And then You know, there's no evidence from your experience that you were crucified with him. The only reason you know is because he tells you. And so you end up having to take God at his word. I've got to take him at his word because he said I was crucified.

I was buried and I'm a rose newness of life and the spirit of god just like persuading us about our the security of our salvation persuades us about that truth and then we reckon there's so many of us that try to reckon it true. Yeah, it's it's the reckoning comes after the persuasion The tracks in the front and the back. You have to know the facts, and then you believe it. And then the reckoning and all that will come. You have to know first. And that goes back to trying to will it. Yeah. Yeah. You can't will it into place. Yeah. Will it in place? No. Yeah.

It's you know, coming back to yes, faith. You have to believe what you what you're seeing. You know, the truth. What I like about what you said is that it's a basic fundamental principle of Christianity. It's not really high spiritual information. It's basic. It's in chapter six of the first book of Christianity. Come on. Yeah.

Every which would eliminate pretty much reform theology. I think that one, that one principle that I was crucified with Christ, buried and resurrected because whether I died with Christ, what does it mean? I'm separated from what? And then you can start investigating. Well, I'm separated from my sin nature. I don't have to respond to it anymore, but I'm also separated from the law. You know, I think, oh, wow. And the world. you know, and these other things, and it gets to be, wow, this death was really all-encompassing in terms of what God did positionally for me.

That's when you get up to Galatians 2.20, it's no longer I live. You know, I've been crucified with Christ, no longer I live, but I live by faith in the finished work of Christ, basically. He comes to that, I've been crucified, you know, the reckoning, but then it's no longer that I live.

And that comes later in the, as Paul explains to the Galatians. But the basics are in the Romans, Romans 6, co-crucifixion. And then you get to the Romans 7 with, after all that, the struggling with it, what is the answer? Thanks be to God. Eliminating my will to try and do this. The answer is in Romans 8 too. Yeah, and then going to that.

You know, what's interesting is that, think about this for a minute, that Romans 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are true, but there's no Holy Spirit to persuade you that they're true. Would anybody ever enter into them? If the persuasion wasn't there and the revelation that it is true, they would just be a bunch of words on a page. You know, nice story, or maybe not a nice story, I don't know.

Probably scared of, yeah. Well, there's this other flip side to that is, we talk about belief, faith, trust, all part and parcel of the same concept, a non-meritorious work. But it's not blind. And that's one thing that's really important is it requires an object and an understanding of what you're trusting. You know, for someone to say, oh, I have faith, there's also the question, the follow-up question that would be, well, faith in what? What is the object of your faith? And that's what the Holy Spirit is all about, is pointing to the object of that faith.

It's not blind. And we've probably all heard it throughout our lives, like, oh, you just believe blindly in this idea of God or whatever. No. There's a revelation tied to this object of my faith. It's not blind. That's right. JD, you pointed out this word resistance is repeated and repeated and repeated. So we'll do one more question. Five.

Did the resistance continue in the early church, even though you're now a believer? I've never seen Christ. Has it been true in Christianity that the resistance is there? Yeah. Otherwise, we'd only have one denomination. It'd be Christianity. Where does the word grieving relate to that word resistance for the believer grieving the Holy Spirit? Yeah. What does the word grieving mean?

Does it mean the or... We'll probably get to that in later lessons. I just... We do. I was curious about how it related to the resistance for a believer. I... but J.D., have you not in your own... not that your... or my experience verifies any truth, but you sit and talk to somebody you really care about and you...

I was talking to a guy yesterday on the phone from California, an old college buddy and... He's a guy that turned his life around and now he's a good Catholic, right? So I started talking to him about the security of salvation and there was a resistance there on his part and it bothered me that he resisted this grace because Catholicism is all about performance. He's doing all these great things for God, right? And so, when I hung up, I was thinking, boy, there's a guy that thinks he's got, he's changed his life so much that he's probably gonna go to heaven. He has no idea what heaven is and what God's requirements are, principles are about.

That kind of goes to, I can't remember, I was just reading in one of my dailies about how, something you said earlier too that I was thinking about is, Satan in the flesh will try and get as close as they can to the truth, add their little twist and you think you're doing well.

I think the hardest thing is like Catholics or others who, you know, and I think there are obviously millions and billions of Catholics who have at least the basic truths, but a lot of them, and I think that's what's used is this just a one degree off of the truth that misleads everybody.

So I want to say real quick, Courtney, I know we're at time, Mike, so sorry, but, um, That counterfeit, the point of a counterfeit is to get absolutely as close as you possibly can to the original. That's true. But the one thing for all counterfeits is they, and I think we'll talk about it in the next lesson, it's that Hebrews 10, 28, where you're insulting the spirit of grace at the end of the day. That's where you go all the way down the line, and then all of a sudden, grace just falls. I like that.

I like the word insulting. I think the word insulting describes when God demonstrates His grace and you don't receive it. It's an insult. Just like sin is an insult. I think it goes back to, I think, with the counterfeit. I think it's harder to show people the truth who are close to the truth but counterfeit. Versus somebody who's never enjoyed that counterfeit. It's a lot tougher to convince somebody that it's counterfeit than to somebody who doesn't see the counterfeit. Find somebody who's not in their religion, not had never been in. I think it's easier to work, the Holy Spirit to work, for us to bring that gospel to somebody who has never heard than to somebody who is, you know, eating the counterfeit.

Yeah, 100% fresh. Because they think they're there. Yeah. And that's why I think, you know, the flesh and Satan use that as much as possible. Because that's a lot tougher to convince somebody that, but I'm good. Right. All right, we've got to close in a couple of minutes. Go. I was going to say, one of the horrible things is the Catholics believe in the sin of presumption, which says, if I believe that I'm saved, I'm in a horrible sin, because you cannot know that in their faith. That is, like, totally horrible.

We're going to close. Father Howard, thank you for the time. We thank you for the discussion and we thank you for your spirit that's constantly revealing to us your grace, your truth and your grace, that we might rest in it by faith. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.