The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit lesson 33 cont.
JD McCulley · Sep 11, 2022
Holy Spirit (2021-23), No. 78
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261928252505

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, let's see. We're going to talk about hindrance of the spirit. I feel like this lesson has been hindered by... I looked at Mike, and I looked at Courtney, and I looked at Mike, and I looked at Courtney, and I just chose you. That was a learned behavior. Mike taught me. Well, it's okay. It's funny because the subject right now and has been for so many months and over a year, I suppose, is this whole subject of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Holy Spirit, right? And when I was first talking to Mike about this class and he said, J.D., it's going to be a little different than what you're used to. I was like, well, what do you mean what I'm used to?

And he said, well, verse by verse, teaching is really a very important part of studying and teaching. He said that you might find that things are a little different here. And he introduced me to the Socratic method where questions just continually flow out. And I'm thinking, how do you guide a class through questions? And he said, oh, the Holy Spirit will guide you.

And sometimes that leads to rabbit trails, right? Sometimes that means we have conversations that are a little bit distinctly different than what was intended. And I love that about this class. I really do. It's not necessarily the right way to go about teaching in every setting, but we're truly, I think, blessed. I've been just hugely impacted by the opportunity to kind of have that guidance from the Holy Spirit.

And that's the subject of some of the things that we're going to talk about today, because that there's a lot of questions about where, when and how do we get guided? And the flip side of that is how do we get hindered too? That has not to do only with the way that we run this class or maybe more so the way that the Holy Spirit guides us through this class. It has to do with your life too, right? How are you guided? How are you hindered?

But before we get to that, we've been talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. And in Ephesians, we read the verse earlier. Here, let me see if I can find that. Several weeks ago, Ephesians 1, 19 and 20. And we contrasted that with a passage out of Corinthians as well. I want to reread the Ephesians passage.

It says, And what is the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe? These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might. And this whole issue of what is the surpassing greatness of his power towards us who believe, this is about you. This is personal. And this power is personal.

One of the things that this resurrection power brings out, and I think it's interesting because this is where Joanne reached out to me. She said, you know, an email would be OK, but I just decided to go ahead and write you. And I love that because my great aunt used to always write me letters and let me know how she was praying for me. And I just thought.

What a lost way of hearing from people and so meaningful and so cool. So anyway, she pointed me to Harold Hohner, which I had studied and used. It's quite a tome of a commentary on one small book of the New Testament. But Hohner goes into great depth into the book of Ephesians. It's a great resource.

But he talks about, in this verse, the word power, working, strength, and might are all mentioned. So there's actually four different aspects of God's power being communicated here. Some are for us, some are not. They're not necessarily not for us, but they belong to God alone. Harold Hohner brings out the first one is power, this word dunamis, where we get our word dynamite from. And we've talked a lot about that. That's that super abounding power that we've established over the course of the last several weeks.

It's a spiritual dynamic force, right? It's the power of God and it's directed where? Where's that power directed in this verse? And what is the surpassing greatness of his power towards something, towards you? So this dynamic spiritual power is directed towards you and it says these are in accordance with the working.

And that word working is where we get our word energy from. It's the energetic power. It's an operative, it's an active energy. So he's actively, energetically working in accordance with the working of the strength, and that word, I'm not gonna worry about the Greek pronunciation, but this word working of the strength, or we might say might, is a power that overcomes resistance. And this is really interesting. Why would we need a power that overcomes resistance? And it's also seen used in Christ's miracles. It's the power that overcomes the physical laws in order for miraculous things to occur. So it overcomes resistance.

And it's only used of God. It's not actually used of us in the scripture, which is really interesting. And then this fourth word is, we said, in accordance with the working of the strength of his might. That last word might is or we might say strength here, which God provides believers.

It's this manifested power. This is the kind of thing you want to see in your life as a believer. You want to see his might, his manifested power. And so I think that this summary kind of comes from right out, although that that was a clarification from Hohner there.

But here's what we know from this verse. We are assured that the power which works in us is all sufficient to do exceedingly abundantly above all our desire or thought. We have the power. We do not have to get it. So here's what Hohner says. He says this of us.

God's great men, women, we are servants. We, God's mighty men, are weak. This is that earthen vessel that we talked about, right? Common vessels is what we decided made the most sense to really understand what's going on in that verse. But he also goes on to say, God's noble men are base and despised, that no flesh might glory in his presence. And this is the resurrection life. Is that what you came here for today? You're a servant. You're weak. There's no place for the flesh to glory.

That's the resurrection life. That's the good news. It's kind of crazy, right? I mean, if you think about it, I mean, you've got all these TV personalities. Surely they're operating by the Holy Spirit. Look at the crowds that they've gathered. Look at the things that they're able to accomplish. But here you have servants, weak, common vessels, containing the resurrection power.

And this is what's cool about this. It's not about you. It's about the power of God through you. And then what's really neat is that it's not a non-participatory power. You get to be involved with that. It's called the Christian life, right? The walk. What are you thinking? You've been talking about that a little bit lately.

J.D., we're not hearing that out here. Sorry. Say that, especially that last part you just mentioned there. I didn't turn the mic off. Now it's on. Now I'll turn it off when I... Go back to that weapons of warfare part. The verse says that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. And this fortress we're talking about is sin, and it's in nature.

And it takes, that power is so strong, it takes resurrection power to deal with it. And it's a power that I can't produce myself. I'm brought to the point where I won't, I won't use or I'll abandon myself in terms of dealing with it and let the power of resurrection deal with it. You know, I think that this is interesting on so many different accounts what you're saying, but I think the word resurrection power is really important because not that the power of the Holy Spirit isn't talked about in Christianity, it is.

Sometimes it's almost worship to the point that it becomes the subject of worship as opposed to being what we're talking about here. But the fact that we're talking about this resurrection power, that same power, is what fuels your life. It's not just a generic Holy Spirit power going on, like falling on us during this worship service or not. We were really close to the Lord when we were up on that mountaintop and the power of the Holy Spirit was just so much greater. This is taking you not up to the mountaintop, it's taking you to the cross.

You got something? Well, just what comes to mind, 2 Corinthians 12, 9, and he has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I would rather boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, insults, and he goes on. That's so good. Yeah. Now, 2 Corinthians 12, 9? Yeah, 12, 9. That's great.

Well, let's take let's take this and maybe I'll avoid a little bit of a rabbit trail there and move to question four, because I think that this illustration is really cool. This is a hard illustration to teach because it's it's really designed to be read.

And as I was reading through it, I was like, I really you know, it makes a lot of sense. But how does this example of the steam engine apply to us and maybe For those of you that have kind of had a chance to contemplate this analogy that Rideout's working us through, I thought it was very, very powerful. Again, these are illustrations. They're mechanical by nature so that we can get some mechanical understanding of what the scripture is saying. And I think it's biblical. But let's think through the illustration.

So a train. I had so many different Mike, I noticed when you were working through these notes, you you edited some freely edited some things to make it more relevant to you. And I had all kinds of illustrations that I went through. So I'll try to stick with what right out says in general.

A train is drawn into the station by an immense engine and it comes to a stop. We were told that this engine is capable of drawing the heaviest trains at a rate of 50 miles an hour. That's between me and Mike. He likes to change the numbers from the book. At present, it is standing quite still. And we go up to it. And I think this is an interesting part. We go up to this train that's sitting there. And we try to push it, try to push it and move it along in the train station.

I imagined in my mind, I took Aiden to the Broncos game the other day and we cut the train down from Thornton. And then we got off the train and we walked and we got back on another train to go over to Mile High. And the train going to Mile High was just sardine packed. I mean, it's like they forgot COVID ever existed.

It was, I mean, it was uncomfortably packed, let's just put it that way. But I imagined if we all got out of that train, all hundreds and hundreds of us, and we started trying to push that guy down the track, what were we trying to force these wheels to move along this track? That's kind of what I had in my mind.

So he says, we go up to it, we try to push it along, we try to force the wheels to revolve, and we call 10, we call 20, 100 to our assistance, but the train stands motionless. All of our effort doesn't move this guy down the track, and the game's about to start. All the men who could get their hands upon it could do no more than push it along at maybe a snail's pace, just kind of rocket forward here and there maybe. But now the engineer takes his place and with one hand upon the lever, he opens the throttle valve and the train glides lightly out of the station and flies tireless with the speed of the wind along the hundred miles of its appointed journey. Ever feel like you've moved like that out of the station, you're flying tirelessly down the track? Rideout's trying to make this analogy to a life that is powered by resurrection power.

He says, that's what it's like. I thought that was really cool because my train doesn't move like that all the time. Does yours? Maybe it stands motionless or maybe it budges along, but there's a reason why that happens. And it's my fault because myself is the one trying to get out and push that guy down the track.

It says, what a mighty hand the engineer has. Ah, no, but he has released the mighty power in the engine, but held back the throttle. And whether it be the steam or the diesel or the electric power that's fueling it, it was that fuel that was the power that was working in, and he removes the hindrance to its working out. Here you have this powerful train capable of cruising down the track at 50 miles an hour. And the whole reason it's not moving is because it's throttled. It's hindered.

The power is inherent. And we looked at Ephesians last week, that Ephesians passage 119, and we talked about that God's power is inherent. This Holy Spirit power is inherent in every believer regardless of anything, any condition about your location, circumstance, race, color, gender. Time in history is the only factor that may be a question there for the fact that the Holy Spirit's dwelling in this way is for church age believers. But for all of us that are believers in the church age, we have this resurrection power that is sitting in the engine and often throttled in our lives. Anybody relate to that? Let's make sure you're on there.

The energy of a freight train going down the road at 50 miles an hour, a hundred cars that took five miles to stop it, that's the kind of energy it had? Inertia? Yeah. It's an interesting analogy, and I'm not sure if it takes five miles to stop us when we throttle down, but we do throttle down, don't we? Yeah, we do. I think it's interesting.

When we prevent that power from entering into our daily life, we come to a standstill. You prevent it. So do I. We prevent this power And we come to a standstill. And when we come to a standstill, I really like what Rideout says here. We sometimes take this really personal, because it's personal, but it also affects the entire body. Not only do we come to a standstill, but the body comes to a standstill, in part, and potentially in whole, as more and more believers are not aware of the kind of resurrection power that is inherent within them and is throttled By what?

Self. Self equals throttle. Holy Spirit equals the engineer that opens the throttle. Right? The Spirit of God, if we may use such an imagery, is the engineer applies the lever, the cross of Christ. That's where it gets interesting in this analogy. He applies the cross of Christ and the throttle is removed. That's why I keep going back to this just basic whiteboard drawing that I came up with last week. There's nothing fancy about it, but when I think about this analogy that Radha was talking about, the Holy Spirit is the engineer applying the cross.

I'm like, this is all Galatians 2.20 right here. And I was talking to Les this morning about this. I said, we oftentimes talk to the kids and we talk to ourselves about, are you trusting the Lord? It's a common question in our household. Are you trusting the Lord right now? The question is, not only are you trusting the Lord, but what are you trusting? Right? What about the Lord are you trusting?

I said, isn't it Galatians 2.20 that we're really driving at with a change of mind where you're looking for, in our case, our children to change their mind about a sin?

And to, in 1 John 1.9, to confess that sin in order that the cross of Christ may be applied into your life is true of you. Is it true that you were co-crucified with Christ on that cross or not? Were you crucified?

That's what I'm asking these kids to trust. Right? Because that's where the resurrection power is. It's on the resurrection side of life. Go ahead. Yeah, just the hungry heart this morning. Of course, the hungry heart is 100% applicable today. It always is, it seems. You know, the last paragraph, Calvary is the secret of it all.

It is what the Lord Jesus did there that counts, and what He did becomes a growing force in the life of the believer when it is seen and rested in by faith. This is the starting point from which all godly living must take rise. We shall never know the fact of the Lord Jesus' victory in our lives until we are prepared to count upon His work on the cross as a source of our personal freedom from the dominion of sin and the old man within. There is no liberty for us that was not first His. The beginning of spiritual growth is faith in that fact.

Boom. That's exactly what we're talking about. That's so cool. Do we need to have somebody beside you to turn it on? What I noticed with Rideout, and I pondered over it for a while, that he said that the throttle was self. So when I began to think about what How does the imagery work? It's interesting. We think, at least initially, that I get to use the power.

I don't get to use anything. All I get to do is to let the power of the resurrected Christ flow through me. I don't get to direct it, maneuver it, Ratchet it up or down. I don't get to do any of that. I just get to allow it. Yeah, he says, what is the throttle? It is self in all its forms. And I think it's what we're talking about here. Not naughty self merely. That's kind of a weird way of saying it. It's not your naughty self merely, but religious self as well, he talks about. It's when you're doing the work and it looks really religious. on the upper part of that hungry heart.

Besides the rest of reception, there's also the rest of resistance. Anytime there's effort involved in a matter of resisting sin, we can be sure that we are depending to some extent upon the flesh instead of resting on the finished work of the cross. I like that contrast. Resistance, rest. That's really good. So, we have this power that works in us.

How do we get guidance about that? There's two things to these last two questions. I'm going to summarize these two questions in the next 15 minutes because it's important that we move forward. We're trying to get overviews in place here. So let's deal with these two topics.

You have the power, the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit, and it's unthrottled in your life. It's not as though the train is on this clear track. It's like there's forks all along the journey. How do you get guidance about that direction? And the flip side is that, is there any hindrance that's associated with the working of the Holy Spirit in your life to hinder you or to guide you?

Thoughts? I think what always comes to mind on this and kind of what was said in the Hungry Heart a little bit is rest. If there's work and effort in these, I think it's when you have rest and He promised peace, you know, and guarding your heart and all these things, but I think it always comes down to rest. If it's a lot of effort, then it seems more self than depending upon You know, the Holy Spirit to work through these things, whatever you're going through, or guidance. I think, you know, peace and rest always come to mind in this.

That is more the indicator. Because the world cannot provide rest or peace. And nor will the flesh. It's interesting, you keep mentioning the word rest. The definition of rest doesn't involve effort, does it? So how do you get down the track? If you're resting? because you're resting on the Holy Spirit, right? And that life is for you. This is where we get into what's God doing in the life of the believer. He's conforming. He's transforming. He's working to conform you to his very image.

So you're moving down the track. You have a destination, but it's not an effort-based journey. It's a rest-based journey based on what you're talking about there. So if I'm struggling with this, is rest in and of itself the trigger? You understand my question? In other words, if I can just rest, the rest of this will all happen. Yeah, so let's talk about that because We know that rest is a place that we enjoy.

It's the result of something. It's not a trigger. It's the result of dependency. When we're dependent upon the truths of who we are in Christ, Christ provides rest. I think also, maybe Mike, you're pointing out a lot when we were teaching a lot of these things, is that complacency. Does this mean we just sit in a room and meditate or do nothing? rest is just sitting, you know, whatever. Yeah. You know, it's not that. It's resting is getting to know him. That is, as we know him, there's rest.

And I think that then, there's been a lot of it actually in Hungry Hearts and others, that service comes from a position of rest. And a lot of times, I think in Hungry Heart, don't go out and become a missionary. And I think it's one last few weeks or there's one where until to, I mean, you just have to either do it or quit your job or, you know, go to missionary. But it's, I don't know how to say it, you know, rest is getting to know Him and as you manifest Christ's service and that will, and the servant, which you talked about at the beginning, it becomes effortless.

Yep. And rest and peace and all that because it just is who you are. And as you know him, it again comes down to the intimacy with Christ. As you know him, you know yourself in Christ. And there it's rest and peace. And then manifestation, like I said, the result is rest. I'm thinking about this whole missionary concept that you just brought up. This was something, I'm going to try to work this last illustration into these questions.

Les and I got married and It was kind of like the world was wide open space, you know? It's like West Texas kids, you know, bought their first house. What could we do? And we thought, we always wanted to go to Seattle and, you know, experience the coffee. And we didn't know. What did you say? We've still never been. We've still never been. Why?

Because the Holy Spirit hindered us. But what's interesting, in and of ourselves, there was nothing blocking us from moving to Seattle. We had the money, we had a car, we could get there, we could get a job. There really wasn't anything in and of our own logistics that was preventing us from being able to get there. But we often describe it as we never had a peace about it. We didn't feel like, it wasn't that we couldn't go, it's just that we didn't feel like the Lord would have us go there for any particular reason other than to get some good coffee.

But we were thinking about, could we move there? What would it look like? Do you remember kind of imagining those things when there's not the kind of responsibilities of whole family and jobs and church? And it's like, okay, what can we do? But what did happen is we were confronted with a situation and an opportunity to go move to Canada and become missionaries. And it was interesting because we approached the subject very similarly.

What is the Lord doing here? Does the Lord want us to sell this house and these two cars that we just purchased and a brand new job that I just got and a budding teaching opportunity that my wife just got? Would God have us go there and completely up?

That would be a lot of work, is what we thought. Like, think about packing all that stuff up and moving it across the country, getting through the border, getting a visa so we could stay and do that ministry. Oh, the Lord would have to do so many things. Seattle was so, like, we just got to get in our car and go. But here, all these logistics came into play. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't about the distance or the logistics that were involved in the direction. It was about where the Lord was guiding us.

And Paul and Barnabas were guided as apostles into many areas throughout Asia and eventually on into Europe. But they were prevented as well. The Bible says that the Spirit hindered them. So it opened, it was very clear, it was easy for them to walk through portions of that that part of the world at that time, but not these parts.

And I want you to think about how that works in your life. You don't have a Seattle or Alberta, Canada type of experience in the same way, but you do. You have your own version of Seattle and you have your own version of Canada, right? Likely, if you've ever experienced the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit guiding you, it's not a place where you say, oh my gosh, the Lord's going to do that.

He's, you know, that's going to be so much work for me. It's not how it works. He's the one that's powering that train down that track. It's not your job. Yourself, your naughty self, or your religious self, it's not that self's job. And that provides a peace and a rest because it's up to him. Do you believe it? That's really the question. That's my question. Do I believe that?

The reality was the coffee was better in Canada, right? There's some funny coffee stories there, too. But Seattle, I've been since then. And it's cool. It's a neat city in certain ways. But it's also got things that are Not so nice about it. I've still never been. But I don't drink coffee. Well, if I were to tell the average person, yeah, we had the opportunity to go to Seattle, but we went to old Alberta. And you've been there. And Miles, you live there. Old Alberta's a lot better than Seattle.

You hear that? Seattle's an awful place. I'm sure Miles is driving right now laughing, right? He's laughing his head off. Yeah, I think that what I hoped to explain with that analogy is that you have, and you will have in your life, these scenarios where you have the inherent power, the sane power, the resurrection power. What are you going to do with it? You're going to get out of the way.

You're going to Galatians 2.20 that. It will move you down a track that you've never even expected existed.

Yeah. So what keeps us from going down those directions? Because I've noticed with so many of my fellow believers, they don't actively resist the work of the Spirit, but they count the cost and decide that moving to Canada is much bigger than going to Seattle. So they go to Seattle. Yeah. And there's not the realization that there's a wooing by the spirit to go and do with him.

A lot of times there's resistance. I don't know how to follow that. I'm failing miserably that way. Hey, this is, I think what you're saying is really important. So get yourself in that frame of mind because There's plenty of times I went to Seattle. What did I find? What do you find when you go to Seattle on your own? Lots of tents. Lots of what? Tents. Lots of tents. Almost everywhere.

Again, I go back to peace and rest. That's right. I would have had peace and rest in that environment. That's right. if you can say a feeling, emotion or something. It's a heart rest, not just an exterior, uncomfortable, you didn't find a house, you didn't find a car, whatever. It's the internal rest of the heart. It is. I like the fact that you say it's that internal rest. You may be perfectly restful physically, but in your spirit you're just wrestling constantly with, what am I doing? What have I done? You wrestle and you wrestle and you wrestle.

Because Seattle was easier, you thought. But then it doesn't end up being easier. Yeah. And there's just the patience and waiting on the ward. That's a key. Sometimes that's the biggest factor. Sure. Explain why you think that's key. Because a lot of times you're being prepared for what he was going to do. where he's going to take you or send you, and you're just not ready yet. So you have to wait.

And it's one of the greatest little books ever written. It's called Waiting on God by Andrew Murray. It's the coolest little book because in that sense it tells you that Waiting is where you get to know the Lord. And it's scary. It's really scary. But it's cool because you're waiting with Him. And if you hadn't have waited, you wouldn't have had that opportunity to hang with Him at that time.

You mentioned that. It's a devotional, right? It's a devotional on that subject alone. And it's very powerful in a sense. Last thing you want to be told is wait. I've got this big decision. I've got this job or that job. Wait. Wait on the Lord. That doesn't sound very American. It's not American. I'm not waiting around for anything. Let's get this thing going.

You're right. I think that's what you're saying is this resurrection power is just as powerful where you are, whether you're deciding on Seattle or Canada, that power doesn't change no matter where you're going. It's inherent. That resurrection power is yours.

You know, one last thought, you know, Rich. It's that guilt or whatever. What if you went to Seattle? Did God allow that? You know and I you know we can get bogged down. It was this right. This is this point was it's the right to yeah I did I oh gee was it did I have a clear picture right on the wall that I'm supposed to be in Alberta that I spoke No, whatever your decision is he allowed it and that's where I think Christians get so bound up in trying to figure out the perfect guidance of the Holy Spirit I together. You've been bringing that up a lot lately, and I think it's important that while we're working on these kinds of faith-based mechanics that need, we need some logistic, the Word provides us the logistics of it, so we need it. But at the same time, we can lose some of that to the logistics here. And so what you're saying, I think, is spot on there. He uses all things. Yeah, and we can get bound up on so much trying to figure things out that we get tied up and don't do anything. And I just go that he allowed it. He did allow it. You know, he allows us to sing, he allows us to fail.

And when you're in that place, that same power is still there to get you on the track that you're headed. And it may be used to focus you to go to the right track. That's right. And he needed that. Circumstances were necessary. You know, so I just, the old things, it's just, we can't get bound up and make the right decision, wrong decision. We made the decision and he allowed it. is the wrong track or whatever in time. But he's allowed that. And that's, again, just the understanding he's using all things. We don't have to make the right decision all the time, I guess. Or at least in our eyes. I think you're right.

And when it comes to these illustrations that we've brought here, it all boils back down to the fact that this is about a personal fellowship with the Lord Jesus. So we're looking at the mechanics, we're thinking about it, but the resurrection power, who got resurrected? Whose power is that? So we're right back here, intimately with the Lord Jesus, with what he did to co-crucify and give us newness of life.

You're a new creature. Don't forget that part of the journey. Don't forget who you are in Christ, because this is where the resurrection power gets released in your life. The throttle gets removed. Your self gets out of the way, and it's a peaceful, it's a restful experience, but it's powerful, and it's resurrection power.

Hey JD, you mentioned your self gets out of the way, and I think that's something that I've been learning recently, is that when we consider ourselves Well, here it is. Where death is, is where the fruit is. Unless the seed dies, it remains no seed boom. But the fruitfulness comes through the dying to self. And I think when you, by faith, put self aside and came to Canada, the fruit is evident to me. And to God be the glory, right? That's what happens, is God gets the glory out of that situation.

What was the text you sent me right after class last week? You said it was about the subject of surrender. Do you remember? I'll check back. That's okay. We'll circle back around to it at some point, but this has been really encouraging. Thanks for walking through that with me. Those illustrations are really fun to think through.

More importantly, I'm excited about what the Lord's doing in your life through the resurrection power that He's given you. Father, how we thank you for your love for us, that you would lavish us with such love and such grace that you would indwell us and that you would empower us to live the life that you've called us to. And Father, as we think about ourself and all the ways that we try to manipulate and work around, we realize that it is an experience of rest and peace and waiting in many cases. But Lord, we're thankful that we have the resurrection, that same resurrection power that raised you from the dead, Lord Jesus. We have that power inherent in us, ready to be released in a way that is guided in your direction and for your glory. And I pray that we would continue to think on these things and behold you in these truths. It's in your name we pray. Amen.