The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit lesson 19 begin

Well, let's get started on lesson 19. Um, I would say I would send the questions out in the chat here, but we're all a little separated with rooms and stuff, but I'll, I'll read off the first question. We're in lesson 19. So I'm trucking along here in the area of sanctification. Um, this is in page 43 and 45 of the PDF. If you happen to have that printed out or a device where you can reference it in the book, it's pages 99 through 105. So we can look up the verses and I'll kind of lead us through.

So question number one, name one mistake the believer can make in the sanctification process. Let's just focus on one. Maybe let's go for the biggest one. So here we're talking about a walking believer who's aware of some truth And the unbelief around the truth of God or the promise of God takes place in the heart and sanctification is something happens to that sanctification process. And there's a mistake that causes that a mistake, a decision, I would say a decision that causes that process. What's the biggest mistake that the believer can make in the sanctification process?

Just throw some things out there. Try to do it yourself. Do it yourself. Does that feel? Yeah. Do it yourself. Okay. Not realize that your sin nature is still fully intact. Okay. Confused about that. Okay. Yeah, let's start with do-it-yourself. So one of the biggest mistakes, I'd say the greatest mistake made by leaders, including myself, is this desire, this effort to sanctify the flesh. What does sanctify mean? Set apart. So how do we set apart the flesh? We've been crucified to it. OK. Yep. If we make an effort to sanctify the flesh, we've got kind of an illustration there. I'm going to read from Colossians. This is Colossians 2, 20 through 23. And we'll come back and we'll pick apart a little bit of this verse.

It says, if you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees such as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, which all refer to things destined to perish with you in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have to be sure the appearance of wisdom. in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. So we have in verse 20, if you have died with Christ, you mentioned that Russ, if you have died with Christ to what? What have you died to? Elementary principles of the world.

What does that mean? J.D., don't you think right here you have a situation where if you're ignorant of being co-crucified with Christ, then this is just something that's babble to you. You can't really understand what he's talking about. Yes, I want to come back to that because that was the second thing mentioned is, Russ, you mentioned something along the lines of you don't know.

Yeah. So, I want to come back to that because in verse 23, there's something that can help us with that. Okay. But in terms of the, yep, so I definitely want to touch on that. In terms of the, just having died with Christ, notice that this is a crucifixion. Right.

You, we have dived to the elementary principles of the world. Give me an example. What's an elementary principle of the world? First of all, what is death? Separation. Right. Absolutely. We'll get that to take care of one second. He's excited. Oh, sorry. Oh, go for a mouse.

I was going to say like, I think reading further down there, you know, that why you submit yourselves to decrees, you know, such as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. And as you're saying, how, you know, how do we sanctify the flesh? It always ends up being through decrees, giving, you know, rules that, law, law keeping to, you know, asceticism kind of is here and those kinds of things to set apart your flesh, I think, but. Is that what the elementary principles is referring to, those kinds of rules? Yes, I think so. I think it definitely includes that. So in terms of the elementary principles that we're dead to, so we're separated from, but we invite them back in a little bit, just a little bit, sometimes, not all the time.

Yeah, Mike's laughing, he's like, I think my frequency might be more than JD's. And it's- I'm looking at Ralph's dog. Oh, right. He probably heard Nash barking and he's like, is this a puppy? No, she's begging me to get up and feed her, but Harold's gonna do that. We're being spiritually fed, your dog's not included. That's awesome.

Yeah, so we talked about the biggest mistake being self-effort, and we talked about having been, in Colossians 2, it talks about having been co-crucified with Christ to the elementary principles of the world. So elementary principles, we're separated from them, but to define that word, it's the basic parts, the rudiments, the elements, or the components of something. So, if you think of a watch, and not a digital watch, but you could, but all the different gears and the timepiece that make up the timepiece, all the individual elements that make up the flesh.

So, it says you're dead to those elements. And what we have in this context with Paul is the ancient Greek philosophers, right? So all of that Greek philosophy was floating around in the mindset of Paul as he was talking about, you're dead to those. And the Greeks thought about the basic principles as essential elements.

So consisting of like the earth, water, air, and fire, the things that are what, what do they fall into the creator realm or to the creature realm? Are they created things? Yeah. So we turn our attention toward the creation rather than the creator himself, right?

Let me ask something right there. One of the things that, like in our society, we have different facets. conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and all of them come with their own set of rules. This is how you ought to behave. This is the way you should behave within your society. Does this mean that rudiments of the world should also include political viewpoints? What does the class think?

I think it's anything that's made up by man, any made up rules that are not specifically in the Bible. The Pharisees did that a lot. You know, they would make up laws that they could obey that were similar to the laws of Moses. But in the same way, we make up rules that seem good to us, but are not necessarily in God's word.

Can someone read Colossians 2.8? See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

That's good. Yeah. So where do these men get their ideas? Because we're talking about, we use the term man-made. Do we think of spiritual powers or demons being involved in this? Possibly. And are those hostile to our thinking? They may be contrary to our thinking, if not hostile. So what we're saying here is that while man may communicate these created based viewpoints while rejecting the creator himself, they bring things down to a creation level. And that's the nature of, of the, the, uh, spirit spiritual powers that are at force against us.

Right. Um, and it comes across as vain deceit, deceit, meaning you actually get deceived. Have we been deceived? Absolutely. When was the last time you got deceived? And the question is, and I don't want you to answer that. But the point is, is that when we are deceived of truth, we participate in a grieving of the Holy Spirit, which we're going to talk about in just a moment. And the purposes of that we're going to talk about, but we want to understand that We're dead to this, yet we subject our minds to the elementary principles of the world, the basic vein philosophies, oftentimes, and to your point, Jim, yes, they do have their origin in the spiritual powers that are fallen, right?

You can see my thinking there. But one of the things that Paul is talking about here is not the fact that we are deceived and we are stuck here. Because this whole passage and the purposes of understanding our separation, that is the death to these elementary principles of the world, is really a message of freedom. This is not a message of bondage. Paul's not talking about that you're stuck here. He's saying that, yes, this happens and it has a consequence, but it's not your reality. So what is the message of freedom here? What is Paul talking about?

And it's in the context of Colossians and elsewhere, for sure. But here we're looking at identification with Christ's death. That's mentioned in the very first verse that we looked at. We talked about the co-crucifixion. So co-crucifixion brings freedom. Death brings freedom. Follow that? What does it bring freedom from?

The elementary principles of the world, right? It doesn't do this automatically for believers. We think whether or not we actually believe this consistently, it crosses our minds. Maybe it's in the back of our mind, maybe it's in the forefront, but we get this idea that we can be immune to it completely, right? Is that true? It is true, but our effort to immunize these elementary principles of the world when done through our own self motives, our own self effort, which is the mistake we've been talking about, lead to something. Right.

So, but Paul's not talking about dwelling in that place of having grieved the Holy Spirit. He's talking about the idea that the struggle is a real struggle. But the Christian because of the presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit. does not have to trust in the elementary principles of the world, which are constantly presenting themselves as being far greater than the truth of God's word.

That's the reason that we fall into that belief system, right? Is that we actually believe, hey, God's not what he said he is. I think it's actually, you know, one of these basic principles that I'm being subject to. So yeah, go for it. Just a couple of things, you know, and when you got to remember, this is like one letter, like Colossians, when you look at it, verse eight sees to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy, empty deception, according to the traditions of man. And according to the elementary principles, we get it back again in verse 20. If you died with Christ, the elementary principles, why, as if you're living in the world, do you Smith, you know, why are we doing this? The answer is given in Colossians 3.

And therefore, if you've been raised up with Christ, keep seeking things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not things on earth. And I think that's, when we focus on the earthly things, we get distracted, we grieve the Holy Spirit. Paul is now exhorting us to say, stop looking at the world.

Where are you seated? Where you're hid with Christ in God. That's where we should be looking. And it's kind of, you know, he's gone through all this, where we can be pulled away by empty deception, by worldly things, politics, everything else that's here. But then he exhorts us to stop looking at that. Look to where you're seated. Look above. And that's how you get away from it.

How do you do that? How do you do that, Courtney? Focusing on Christ. How do you focus on Christ? through his word and the Holy Spirit. Yeah, I mean, that's the only way we get to know him is through his word. And then the Holy Spirit is the one that convicts and convinces us of those truths. So it's again, by faith you have to realize we are, for we have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. It's by faith. in trusting in what he has said in his word. And that's, again, the Holy Spirit's work is to convince us of these truths and believe them. Absolutely. I think the big point is that, you know, Paul goes through this in Colossians 2, but he gives the answer in Colossians 3. Stop looking at all the stuff down here. Look where you're seated, where you're at. Look above. Don't keep getting distracted by empty philosophy and deception. Look at where the true life is and where you're hid. Yep, absolutely.

I want to get to that question number two a little bit further, but I did want to circle back around to one of the things that Russ talked about in this. I'm going to quote it from Colossians 2, 23, where it says, these are matters which have to be sure the appearance of wisdom and self-made religion and self abasement and severe treatment of the body. So you have three different examples. of elementary principles of the world, right? So the first one is the appearance of wisdom. Can words, let's just say you're reading an article on a news site, and maybe it's contrary to what you may think for whatever reason, but it's written so well that you're thinking, wow, there's an appearance of wisdom here. But one of the things that Paul qualifies that appearance of wisdom is that it's self-made. It's self-made. So what's the origin of it? It's creature-lovable, right? Yeah. And we think about self-made religion in a lot of different categories.

Mike, you mentioned some of those isms, and those are the easiest ones, but what about the ones that, and this is what's tackling us so much, or we're being tackled by so much today is, what about the things that you can't define anymore? Whether it be, I'm trying to make sure I say this correctly. The idea is that you don't know anymore. You can't know for sure.

So therefore the best argument sometimes wins. And that's happening with this redefining of everything, right? We've tracked it through the postmodern era where everything is being deconstructed and broken down. And it appears wise because all of a sudden it's like, yeah, why did I define that so harshly at one point in time?

Maybe I shouldn't define it so harshly. Maybe I should loosen up my definition. Right? Let's take gender identity, whatever the case, we won't go down the path. But the point is, is that there's a redefinition applied that there is no definition. What's wrong with that?

It has the appearance of Oh, I'm being far more sensitive. I'm being if I don't take such a rigid perspective, I can be more accompanying to another person's belief system. And that and if I don't, I'm going to be a bigot. Yeah, Eddie, I think I think the sole purpose and the base under all the gender is to take God out of creation. He created man and woman.

So how do you get around that? You start whittling around the ads? Nah, it's not really man and woman. Now there's what 53 different definitions of identity. And the classic one, it was funny when we went to do the testing, you have to fill out the little form and it's male, female or unknown was on the floor. Okay. That's funny. It is funny, but it really begs the question of, this point I'm trying to make is that the unknown means it's undefined, right? So I can't refer to that person as a, he or she, it's a, it's something that's unknown. Right.

But I think, I think the base, the basal cause is to get God out of creation. That's another thing to eradicate God out of everything. And so it's in what you're talking about, it's the, you know, take God out of everything. and question everything. Well, now all the gender is to get out of God created man and woman. That's the base of all of this is to get God out of it. Man, well, it isn't just man or woman. It isn't like what the Bible says. Let's remove God out of creation. That's right. And there's two things there. First of all, Romans one talks about what is the creature trade? What's the big trade?

I'm sorry. Not that. Yeah. The creature. What's the big exchange in Romans one 18 ish. is they know what's that they trade worshiping the creator and what do they do they worship the creature and so do you every time the biggest mistake we make Is this in our sanctification process as believers is trade the truth of the creator for that of the creature. You do the same thing. And I'm pointing to myself with one finger, not three. Yeah. He's going to be doing this. And I always get confused about which fingers point away, but that's Courtney's illustration. I'll stick, I'll nail down the faith on the train track illustration, and you can keep your fingers. I'm just kidding.

But yes, that's what we do. We go through this great exchange and we exchange the truth of God for the lives of the creature, right? And that's this idea of self-improvement, this idea of having bought into this idea of self-made religion. right? Trusting in the basic principles of the world. Um, and we think that that's going to set us apart.

We're going to get more into that. But number question number two says, what is crucifixion? Why is crucifixion rather the only answer to the flesh? And I want to just kind of give us some context of what is that? Yes, we have. Sorry, I got an echo. Someone, is it maybe the class? Mike, you had, oh, there it went away.

So we were talking about why is crucifixion the only answer to the flesh? Yes, we have Rome, sorry, Colossians 3 as the answer to the first questions for sure. But what's, in our mental process, what's the first thing that we must trust? in order to understand that we are no longer subject to those basic principles. What's the first thing?

And it's right there in the verse, Colossians 2.20, if you have died. So oftentimes we talk about, you know, I'm talking to myself or my kids or whatnot, and you need to trust the Lord, but what are you trusting in? Where does that trust start? Well, Paul talks about that trust starting in your co-crucifixion.

That first mental hook is I'm dead to this. Do I believe it? I'm crucified. I can't put enough lipstick on a pig to make this issue or this thing, or this thought please God, but by golly, I'm going to try, right. I'm going to make every effort to make this thing look far better than it does. So we get in, we get into the remodeling, the re renovation stage. Right. Never been there. Well, J.D., who's driving that desire? Who is? The old man. That's right.

The old man trying to get relevancy, even though he's dead, you know, with the co-crucifixion, we still have the two natures. So he's trying anything he can to keep us focused on that. That's why all the self, the self, the self, the self in that verse is that's the only way to keep him relevant. is to keep having us focus on that.

I would add to that that when first presented with a trial or a problem in my life, the very first question I always ask is, well, what am I gonna do about this? This is the wrong question. That's interesting. It's totally the wrong question, but it's instinctive that I, that's the first question that hits my mind. And if it wasn't for the Holy Spirit who indwells each one of us, that would be the last and only question.

What am I gonna do about this? And go ahead. Yeah, I was just gonna say, oftentimes, I know that for myself, when I ask that question, I'm looking at things from a perspective of self-help. How am I going to pull myself out of this, right? We call it the boot, you know, pull up our bootstraps. And oftentimes that's where the vein philosophy of man comes in is that you can prescribe some kind of self-help, self-religion that will get you through this. You have the ability in your own efforts to renovate this thing. And so we end up in bookstores and we're, you know, we're pulling down things and looking at, you know, self-love and all of a sudden you find yourself focus on yourself.

And that's right. The essence of what you ask or the question that pops into your mind, what, what am I going to do is a hundred percent on you. And that feels, it feels responsible, right? Cause you're taking responsibility for it. Yeah. I really agree with that.

And I think that, uh, as an example is, um, The gospel tells us to love our neighbor as ourself, right? Which means I better get busy working on loving myself before I can love my neighbor. And that's the philosophy that hits your mind. And most religious denominations have that same philosophy.

If I can't love me, I can't love anybody else, which is totally self. Well, that's got a whole bag full of wisdom with it because it's in the Bible, I can quote it. The problem is, is that it is irrelevant to a crucified believer. It is irrelevant, and here's the reason why.

Paul talks about, in Galatians 5.24, he says that those of us that are in Christ have crucified the flesh being the affections and lusts that we have, right? So they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh. A crucified thing is not to be, it's not to be bettered. It's not to, something that's crucified, we don't get through our mental process and self-help efforts, we don't get to better that. We don't get to sanctify that.

Right? It's, it's the mindset of, Oh, if I could just be better at that, have you ever felt that way? If I could just be a better man or a better woman, better father, better husband, better, you know, coworker, et cetera. And then what we do is we start prescribing all the things that will make us better. And, and what the, what Paul saying here is nope. The first, the first thought that crosses your mind with regards to these elementary principles of the world is you're dead. Yeah. You're dead. You're separated from them.

And I think, J.D., you'll notice that every sort of subtle heresy that finds its way into the body of Christ always is on that basis. And the question is, do you want to be more spiritual? Do you want to do this, do that, or do whatever according to God's word? Well, we have the method. And so you get a methodology that is designed to enhance the flesh rather than to keep it crucified. Absolutely. Well, question number three says, excuse me, says, what happens if we are careless? And that's the key word here.

We're careless and fail to quote, mortify the deeds of the body. What happens in our lives, in our minds, around us, all the things? What happens if we are careless and fail? Well, first of all, what does failure look like in that situation? It's the opposite of what, it's really what we've been talking about, right?

We brush right past death, our co-crucifixion, we brush right past it. Because if you go through co-crucifixion, guess where your mind has to go? Where does your trust have to go if you're co-crucified with Christ? Where's your life now as a believer? In Him. Is it in you? It's in Him. So if you go through mentally the co-crucifixion with Christ, you end up dead and He ends up being the life, your life. So if we carelessly fail to believe the co-crucifixion and we mortify the deeds of the body, what happens? We give room to the flesh all of a sudden. And luckily the flesh doesn't pick away at that. It just kind of greets us kindly and sets off to the side and doesn't have anything to say.

Right. Yeah. Right? So this idea of giving room to the flesh, we make provision for it. We fall subject to its lusts, right? And we grieve the Holy Spirit. We've studied this quite a bit. But this idea, I kind of gravitated toward this idea of giving room to the flesh. It's kind of like this.

You build a mother-in-law suite. And as a believer, you've put, you've kind of very kindly moved the sin nature to the mother-in-law suite. You got the main residence, right? So there they are over there in the mother-in-law suite, but through temptation, which is the, the truth of what's happening, they knock on the door and you're like, ah, they're still on the property. I'm going to let them in. So you let them in, you have coffee, you chill out for a little bit. And you're like, I think this is enough. And you put a limit to it. and so they go back to the mother-in-law suite.

But over time, as we give room for the flesh to enter into who we are in Christ, we call that spiritual insanity, by the way. That's what Courtney mentioned in our last class a couple weeks ago. We have this presence of the flesh living in the mother-in-law suite, but as they come over and they keep knocking, you know, that's the temptation to believe these elementary principles of the world, but we let them in and we coddle the relationship.

We say, the flesh says, hey, I'd like to take down this photo, just this portrait photo of your family, and I'd like to replace it with something different. You're like, oh yeah, I could see change sounds good. So you're like, okay, that sounds good. So the next time he comes over and you sit down for coffee and it's a little bit more, it's like, let's get this dining room. I heard there's some really cool stuff at this particular furniture store that I love and he moves us into it. And all of a sudden we're redesigning the dining room.

And the longer we allow the presence of the flesh, he'll complete his renovation in your mind. It doesn't change who you are in Christ, but now you're skipping past that whole coke crucifixion, and now you're living according to those principles of the world, that vain philosophy. And this was kind of an analogy that helped me, you know, kind of get my mind around this, but the flesh does everything in his power to enter this main residence of our mind and occupy it and redecorate it. But at that door, when the flesh knocks, what's your first thought?

I'm dead to you. I'm dead. It's another analogy would be you served in the military. You went through all the rigors of training. You've been reduced down to the mindset of obedience and complete trust in everything that your commanding officer says to you. You complete your time and you're living in civilian life after having served your time. And you're walking through the grocery store and all of a sudden the commanding officer shows up and he says, hey, how are you? It's been a while. How's civilian life?

And as you start to explain, you can see his face change and all of a sudden he's asking you to get down and give him 20. Do it now, soldier. He says, do it now. Don't waste any time. So you drop the Ritz crackers all over the floor and you're pumping out 20 pushups or a hundred, I don't know, whatever. Does the commanding officer have any power over you in civilian life?

No, no. But it's so familiar. What do you do? you let them in the resident, right? Just like they're out of the mother-in-law suite, just like they're out of the military. These analogies are just representative of that voice that knocks at the door and you do not take the time to mentally understand through faith that you've been crucified, right? So you make the mistake of trusting and trusting leads to grieving. Right. So what does the word grieving mean?

And that's where we'll pick up next week and start to look at this process of, of letting the flesh in through the analogy of the commanding officer or, you know, redecorating our home. And we, we start to entertain it and a couple of things, just, you know, wanting going back to the Colossians three, if we're not focused on things above, what are we focused on? And that's how we get the creep and the coming back in of the officer or whatever.

The other is I think of, you know, day one of identification is, you know, 6-11, where we consider ourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God. That's the... Christianity 101. And, you know, Paul is very, you know, obviously this is an important topic for Paul because, you know, he lays that out in, you know, Romans 6, the very, you know, beginning of our co-crucifixion.

But then Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I live.

You know, he's I think he's very aware of what's going on, of our tendency to fall back into focusing on self and letting that creep come back in. You know, he's I think he's warned us several times and through his word that, you know, keep it focused on up above.

Don't don't let that creep don't don't let the grandma quarters or whatever. Don't allow for the extension of your house to have that happen. He's very aware of it, which I think we're all aware of that creep that comes in. Well, I don't want you changing my analogy with grandma quarters. Mother-in-law, mother-in-law, sorry. Being a grandparents, we're looking for grandparent quarters now. That's sad.

All right, well, we'll pick up with question number four next week. And Mike, I would imagine you'll be able to try to get those questions out so we can. Yeah, I will today. All right, well, let's pray. Father, how we thank you for the truth of your word that we have been co-crucified with you.

And the result of that is that we are separated from the flesh. And while very present in each of our minds and sometimes stronger than others, Lord, we know that we are separated and made alive to you and that we have life in Christ. And so, Lord, we pray that as we're tempted to redecorate who we are through self-help and self-made man efforts, we would recognize that those are creaturely perspectives that have their source outside of you as our creator. And Lord, so I pray that we would have that cross our mind as we hear the knock on the door, that There is freedom in our identification with who we are in you.

And we thank you for that. We just pray for the next hour and the meal, uh, head, um, just for a great time of fellowship and learning in your word encouragement, uh, amongst, um, all the believers that are able to attend. It's in your name that we pray. Amen.