Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, Class 34 end, 35 begin

We actually, I actually managed to kind of finish off last week without even touching the last question. So I thought, well, since I'm kind of up again this week, I will touch on it because I didn't want to leave it right. I would be it would have been appalled if he could. heard me finish that chapter without touching that question, because he's, you know, he's been talking about service or ministry, right? And this is the, you know, the way that he concludes that section is on the salvation of souls, evangelism, right?

And I just kind of I think I'd mentioned a week or two ago that this is the part of ministry that reaches out. Most ministry goes on within the body. It's for the building up of the body. But this is the arm that reaches out to those outside the body in order to bring them in. And it is a ministry of the Holy Spirit. It's not our work. It's His work. And of course, He uses us as vessels in that. in that work.

Part of his quote here, he says, the gospel spirit is the spirit of Christ. I do not now speak of the evangelist, but rather of us all. And then he says this, do we love souls? Do we long to see them saved? And I highlighted that portion. He says, do we love souls and we long to see them saved, then we will be ready to give the gospel to others. And a little further down he says, how this searches us. He says, it is hard to speak of Christ if we are not in communion. It is hard not to speak of Him when we are. And then he says, how this searches us. And that searches me, certainly.

You know, it doesn't always come as the first, you know, most natural thing to me to share Christ with an unbeliever. You know, sometimes it's there in my mind, but I often, you know, chicken out, for lack of a better word, you know. when it comes to sharing Christ. And what does that say about, you know, about my communion with Christ, right? So, I didn't want to move on without touching on that. I could say a little bit more, but I'm going to see if anyone else had anything to say on that first. I really like the fact that you use the word chicken out, because I really think that's appropriate. We do that a lot.

You know, we're not going around looking for, you know, patting everybody on the shoulder to say, are you saved? Like that guy did when the Titanic went down, you know, he kept going from float to float and ask, that's what he would say, do you know Jesus Christ? At the same time, I think as you go along, you begin to realize that any sort of a relationship you're going to have with somebody that's long term, if you're a believer, it's got to be based on that they're a believer. You know, I think every one of us probably has at least some persons who were close friends of ours at one point that aren't today because they never came to Christ. Because your whole value system changes. You know, it's very, very difficult. So. Yeah. JD, you're I'm moving around. Yeah, so you got something ready to come out there. So there's a couple things on my mind with regards to this.

And Courtney, you and I talked about some of the missionaries that have been involved in your life. that are kind of circling around even our own local body and obviously the ones that we support. So this goes out to gospel evangelism, right? What is evangelism? We're talking about the ministry of the Spirit and we've been reviewing the fact that ministry has a lot of different capacities and it's designed to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and used to the edification of the Church.

But what about this situation where from the local body there comes a soul who desires to reach out beyond themselves? You talked about it as an arm of ministry. And in the scripture we see that there's different instances of sharing the gospel, right? There's the arm that's sent out from the local body that we support. And then there are those gospel efforts, if we want to call them that, that are made on our local soil, right? And I think that, you know, in Christianity, there's a lot of different maybe judgmental perspectives of like what kind of missions are you in or what kind of gospel-sharing ministry are you in?

Are you on the street corner? Are you going door-to-door? Are you a chaplain for the football team? In what capacity? And I don't think the capacity is as important as a love for the message that you're sharing. And I think that that's what Rideout's talking about here is that it searches us and it's not an individual that's just called to missions or one who is just called to be a pastor teacher.

It has to do with each and every one of us and our love for another human being who needs to know the truth and I think that that's one of the things that really embodied my heart when I set out to To think about and I was sharing the gospel at a pretty early age in my in my walk anyway And it was very scary but it was one of those things where I kind of just pushed through and pushed through and then I made my own tracks and you know, I revised them and made them better and and I felt like they'd shut the door on me less if I just made the track a little better and had a better little image, you know, associated with it. but no it searches each and every one of us and we all have a mission field and so I'll stop there and just maybe let the class speak to that but It is a very special arm of what the Lord is doing. It's it's the going out right?

And but what is that? What is that? What's that mean for Ralph? What does that mean? You know for Joanne or Bob or Brian or Miles or Mike? Like what does this mean to us? That's a question I'd like to actually think about for a minute. Yeah, I was going to say, for me personally, it's actually very easy for me to live inside a pretty Christian bubble. You know, I drive truck for a living, so it's pretty solitary, you know. I say thank you to the person at the, you know, I get my scale ticket, but I don't have conversations, you know, so it's easy to isolate inside a you know, the Christian circles.

That's for, you know... Go ahead. Yeah, sorry. You know, I think also, this has to be framed in the fact that it's not us. You know, we make it that we have to be the ones that are going to bring everybody to Christ. You know, again, what we're saying, it's the Holy Spirit that does it. And I think in a lot of ways, kind of what J.D. is, you know, there's missionaries, there's all sorts, but, you know, we may be just a light, that they notice something different about us, and then they ask, or whatever. And I also go back to, in Corinthians, where, you know, Paul planted a Paulist water, and God brought the growth. And we think we have to do all phases of it. And we have to bring somebody to the saving knowledge. And it's not. It's ultimately the Holy Spirit.

We can be used in a thousand different ways. Not that we're a specific missionary or a specific evangelist or whatever. I think we're used just I think one of those hungry hearts, I may be called to be just a flower along the path. Somebody saw something different. Again, I think this gets a little bit dangerous in that we have to feel like we're the ones that have to bring people to Christ. It's not your responsibility.

Exactly. And I mean, we're a part of, you know, and I think a related story about Bill Faye a thousand times, you know, it's somebody who said something years before that hit him years later that, you know, finally realized about his need for a savior. And it may be, you know, again, we're kind of the fast food, you know, microwave generation. We want to have it happen right now. And it may not be in God's timing.

You know, we have to leave it, leave it up to the Holy Spirit working on that person. And, you know, when we say, you know, we have to be in the soul saving. Yes, we do. But if that's our focus, that we're going to be the ones that do it, our focus is wrong. Mm hmm. Courtney, Rhino makes the point that He says, do we love souls? Question mark, do we long to see them saved?

Then we will be ready to give the gospel to others. The readiness shows the state of soul. It's hard to speak of Christ if we're not in communion. It's hard not to speak of him when we are. So it's my responsibility to love souls, to be ready, or to Have a longing in my heart that they be saved, or is it just any human being, or just people that I know are close to me? I think anybody. I think it's just the longing is there. I think we all long for everybody to have what we have in life in Christ. I think that's a longing that we all have. I think it's a loving part. We have in our family a couple of them, I think. my nephew's wife was not, you know, she's, she, rougher background, you know, this and that. And even my brother was, you know, a little more judgmental and things.

But Ingrid and I basically just showed her love, you know, didn't judge, passed, didn't do anything, just showed love. And, and she ultimately came to know the Lord. And she referenced that, you know, we were, we didn't, we didn't judge. We just accepted her and loved her. And that was the key. And we weren't the ones that brought her to knowledge, but that was the watering and planting and all that.

It brings me to tears. One of my nephew's sons, he was a Camp Elam. And it was where he referenced that it was us and that he knew that we prayed every time for dinner. And that's what drew him to it, just us praying for dinner. That was an always thing, and that was very impactful for him. We had no idea, but it was at a campfire, talking about what's going on with him. And that was one of the big things, just us praying. And that, you know, so when we think about what we have to do, it's just being available and being a light. You know, that's the key. It's not that I have to go and save them.

Just, you know, the love for the Lord will be noticeable to a dark world. You know, I do think that there's this last sentence that Rite Out says, let's pray that the Spirit of God may arouse in us to this, his great work of the salvation of the soul. I do know that as you grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, you become extremely aware that there are only really two existences that there are. There's one in Christ and one outside of Christ. And no matter how much happy dance you put on it, one's lost and one is saved.

And even though there must be the work of the Spirit, and maybe we ought to spend more time praying about that God would, the Spirit of God would arouse in us a hunger for the salvation of souls. I like that prayer. I think that it is maybe at least a reminder that that is a focus of why we're here, right? And the verse 1 Peter 3 15 really comes to mind.

So what Courtney was saying about how we're used as maybe we're the only light or the Bible that others read. We talk about that a lot with our kids too. The point was that it's not our responsibility to save souls. As an ambassador, it is not our message. We are the giver of the message and we do it out of love, right?

That's the ultimate desire is for them to understand that they are loved by God. They were created in the image of God in order to be loved by God. And there's a problem and we take them through that problem But we do that for the purposes of loving them and so that they might know the love of the lord Like we do and not be in that other existence as you mentioned mike but first peter 3 15 talks a lot about to me what I think our responsibility is in light of the souls that are lost that god brings into our life and I think that This is one that's just kind of pounded on me over the years.

It says, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. Now, this assumes that you're giving a defense and maybe not sharing the gospel is always a defense, but often it is. And I think that this verse helps us understand that our responsibility is to be prepared for the reason of the hope that you have. And that's a question you have to ask yourself is, are you prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks you for the hope that you have? And we should be able to do that, right? That's our opportunity, our privilege to share the gospel message.

But the really interesting part of that is the word asks. And I'll maybe leave it there. Why I would ask, be prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks. I've really kind of bolded that in my mind for years. And I'll let Miles, if you want to kind of chime in on some of that. It takes me back a few years. You've been teaching that for a while. And I agree.

Through this whole conversation, there's a man named Yuri in my mind. He's the guy who unloads the potato trailers at Old Dutch. And he's from Kazakhstan. And, uh, originally he's, um, and, uh, and he's not a bleeder. Um, but he always, when we are past, you know, he always comes over to talk and, um, You know, the Lord's really placed him on my heart for quite some time, and yet his English is terrible. It's hard to talk about anything, you know, never mind, uh, try to talk about the gospel. You need to get the tongues.

Yeah, I know. Well, I thought I'd give him the gift of a good seed resource translated into Russian, but found out they're having trouble getting some of their books printed right now and that kind of thing, so, you know, but, but I, um, He speaks Russian. So I have this love for his soul. I'd long to see him saved. That's there. And yet, the right opportunity or conversation or question hasn't presented itself. So I've been wrestling with that myself. Our conversations are usually about one to two minutes long, once or twice a week kind of a thing.

And so a lot of this is very, you know, it's very close to home. And I wrestled with that some, you know, because like you said, JD, you know, when they ask, when a person, and I think there's absolutely something to that. When they have the, they see something, they know, they begin to see their need, you know, um, there's this point where they, they will ask you, um, what is it like, what, what makes that difference? Um, and, and that I think is a real fertile, um, soil. Yeah.

You know, miles that, you know, first of all, Ingrid said, maybe the Lord's wanting you to learn Russian, but, um, the, uh, The other is that, again, timing. This is the planting, developing the relationship over many years, that he feels comfortable with you. It's the Lord's timing, not ours, and our anxiousness, your anxiousness, which we all have when we're family members. Again, it's a process, planting, watering, all this. It may be ten years. It may be next week. It's the Lord's timing.

Mike, I want to get back to the one thing you said on that last thing, that let us pray that the Spirit of God may arouse us to this, His great work and the salvation of souls. The key of that is His great work, not ours. And that's where I think we get off track, is that it's not ours. It's his work, his timing. Miles, we're anxious. I think it's to build that relationship. And it may not be you. It may be somebody else that he referenced. Man, this guy that comes into the truck all the time. He says about the Lord and talks to somebody else. It may be somebody else.

So you're saying that it's not the analytics of professions of faith at the end of each major event. Although that can be very interesting and beneficial, but I love how you said it's his great work. And it sounds a lot of times when we get into evangelical circles or contexts within ministry that have to do with evangelism that it is a notch in a belt as opposed to his great work.

It's his work and his timing. I mean, we have to throw that in there. It's his timing and his work. So, you know, we just have to be willing, you know, instruments in his hands. I also think that in order for you to be approachable in this equation, you must have that hope in you. People have got to see it.

In terms of responsibility, I think that's where the responsibility is, that we grow in the knowledge and grace and the conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit of God. And what does that create? It creates a non-verbal communicator to a non-believer that there's something different. There is a hope. There is something of value that is part of who my person is that you don't see in everybody around you. So my responsibility is to continue to grow in Christ. That's it. That's it. That's being a light in a dark world.

They're drawn. They're drawn. Your light can be dim or bright, depending on, you know, and Miles, the same thing, you know, with me and the drill rig. A lot of people have asked me, why am I so different? Well, not crazy, but... Oh, I could tell them. I know. I suddenly realized I better clarify that very quickly.

I've had several conversations with people just because of There's a difference between the dark world of a drill rig versus the light. And it's not that I'm out there on a soap bar preaching the gospel. It's just they know something's different, and that's the light in a dark world. That light in the dark world, I mean, my mind here was kind of revolving around 2 Corinthians 4, you know, surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not of ourselves.

And, you know, that's in the context of the glory, you know, the glory of God in the presence of Christ. That really, I think, is what it's all about. You know, that's in that 1 Peter passage, you know, they see this glory, you know, radiating out of this, this earthen vessel. And, uh, and they're like, what, what is that essentially? And I think that the defense that we give, I think, you know, to answer that question, what is that? The answer is Christ. You know, Christ is the reason that this, that this vessel looks so different to, you know, to you. Um, yeah. So, And it's the work of the Holy Spirit, right? That's his whole class, the person, the work of the Holy Spirit.

I was going to go back and read some of this, because we're talking about what's our responsibility here, and I think we're pretty clear that it's not ultimately our responsibility, but what's our role? And Rideout talks about it a little bit earlier, and this just has to do with preparation for ministry, right? It could be evangelism or any other aspect of ministry, but he says, on the other hand, every true minister of Christ will hunger for greater fitness and a fuller knowledge. It will be, however, knowledge of the Word of God which He craves, and to that He will give time and prayer beyond all else." And while that could be kind of seen as law-based, and we could definitely take it at law-based, but when we look at it from the angle that we've talked about for so long, this is time spent with a person, and that time spent with a person Bolsters your defense because you're able to communicate this person to another human being more clearly Bolsters your hope because you know a person more closely than you did before and so, you know for us for us to be prepared as ambassadors to be prepared as those who give a defense to everyone who asks and would have us spending time with the Lord Jesus in His Word. And, you know, that's where the rubber meets the road in terms of preparations for all types of ministry, including evangelism.

I agree. I agree. And it goes back to that quote that you mentioned last week, Mike. And I want to maybe bring that back up. It comes from the Hungry Heart on the 3rd of October, or 10-3.

It says, Until the believer's faith is firmly established in the fact of his position in the risen Lord Jesus, he will not be able to rest in Him during the process of his position becoming his condition. One must be secure of the source where he can trust for the growth. I think we could say that last sentence a little differently. In this context, one must be sure of the source before he can be prepared to communicate the hope that he has.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah, that reminded me a lot. It's been going through my head here the last 10 minutes in the series that Tal Maloy did on trials and sufferings. And I don't know who heard this or remembers this, but he was in the hospital and he had a roommate, George, and George comes to him and says, you know, I perceive two things. One, that you have peace, and two, that you love me. And that's just remarkable. After, you know, a few hours of conversation, he's like, I think you love me. And Hal's response is actually what surprised me most. You know, But he just said, well, let me set you straight.

One, it's not my peace, it's Christ's. And it's not my love, it's Christ's love. And that confidence, that assurance in the fact that it's Christ's love, because I think a lot of us would respond, well, I do love you, or something like that. But he said, no, it's not of me, it's of Christ. And that's the key. So when they ask, when they come to you with that kind of a question, you're able to give the right defense, the right answer. It's nothing but Christ.

You know, if there's something you see in me, it's, you know, that's... Well, I'm glad we did cover that question here because that was a fantastic bit of discussion. I'm really glad everybody kind of just, yeah, everybody added some really, really great content there. So we've got six minutes by my clock.

Should we crack the door on inspiration, enlightenment, and prophecy? Yes. Yes. Right? Okay, so this will be the first question of Lesson 35. And so this is beginning Chapter 6, so we kind of shift the topic to to this topic of scripture. And the first question is, how does Rite Out define inspiration, enlightenment, and prophecy? Anyone want to take a crack at that? Courtney does. All right, great.

Again, J.D., this takes me back 15 years to Bible study at Cary's. We talked about revelation, canonicity, that whole discussion from Mount Sinai. That was pretty foundational stuff in my thinking as far as how my thinking has been set up in terms of a lot of these questions. Yeah, and often these kinds of topics seem to come across very academic and dry a lot of times. The truth is, it's not, but it has to do with how you view it.

And so, yeah, I won't go on to answer the question, but I do think there's a typical response to, oh, we're talking about Inspiration enlightenment prophecy like and then it does get into what well, how do we interpret the scripture? How do we understand this person that this this book is talking about? but Anyway, go on you can dive in there. I would say I would say that I Tried to frame the question that yeah, you had to answer a what inspiration, enlightenment, and prophecy are, but along with that, you come to an understanding of what God is doing in terms of making us aware of what he's saying in his word. In other words, can I, as a young middle-aged old believer, give him authorship of the word? Will I understand it if I read it? And is it applicable to my heart and my conscience?

In other words, is it just another book to read? Is it just a bunch of other work? Because one of the things I find in believers today is how little they read the Bible in general. How little time they spend just quietly going through whatever, you know, and not on a regimented basis, on a grace-based basis. And through that process, do they come to see things that they wouldn't otherwise see, you know? Mike, I totally agree with you. I think about that a lot.

How much time during the day do we spend in the Word versus, and this is my, my kids will beat me up, but you know, versus Instagram, Facebook, even my emails and everything else that we have. And how much time do we spend just with the Lord? And this goes back to what You told me years ago, spend time with him, read the word just to know him. Don't study it, just read it. That's been extremely helpful. Not law-based, but I try and read every morning. spend time with the Lord before I see any email, before I see anything. For me personally, it's just my mind beginning to race into the world and all the trials of the day. I'm constantly amazed at how much do people actually spend in the Word? Even reading books and other things, but actually in the Word.

I think it'd be shockingly small. I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. One of the things I really enjoyed in our trip was that every day we were talking about God's Word and some of it was triggered by the hungry heart for the day or just some scripture that came up at a meal and off we would go, you know.

I don't think we had one discussion. between you and Echol talking about sports, or not you. Not me. That's Brian and Echol. Talking about sports. I said, you know, we talked about the Lord a lot. Our life should be like that all the time anyway. It doesn't matter how busy we are. It's like you can't separate God's word out from whatever he's called us to do in the world.

You know, it goes back to what you were saying earlier this morning about, you know, relationships, friendships with people. You find that you know, it just gets very dry, very boring, talking politics, sports or whatever, you know, endlessly. You know, it's those relationships with believers that are centered around the person of Christ, you know, that are rich and deep and meaningful. So that's, yeah, and really, without that time in God's Word, we don't We don't have that content and knowledge of who he is to share.

Well, the fact that we have it, that we can understand it, that we can gain access to it, makes the world a difference. And the fact that the Holy Spirit's role in that is something we're going to touch on next week for sure. But without that knowledge, we would be groping in the dark just like everyone else. And so again, what great work it is that the Lord gave us the person of the Holy Spirit to help us understand His Word and understand who He is.

Without that, we have nothing to talk about, and we have nothing to fellowship together with. It's oftentimes left to some kind of, and Mike there, I use like Catholic interpretation of the scripture where only those of certain cleric roles can help you understand these things, and you're always waiting for permission to understand things over time, as opposed to being able to yourself, individually, understand the scripture through the power of the Holy Spirit's inspiration and illumination of it and that's a that's a that's Fundamental to our faith without this we literally won't be able to understand You know, it's interesting J.D. when I was reading The Hungry Heart this morning. I was struck with the fact that how The Spirit's job is well, and I shouldn't use the word job, but his I activity is to show us that the Father loves us, and that we're not to spend all of our time thinking about ourselves and our own state, but we're to think of Him.

And He orchestrates that, and He interests in my heart to be occupied with Him, J.B. Stone, he says. And then he says, if I have lost the world and its things, What have I gained? I have a person. Here's the thought that hit me. I was done with The Hungry Hearter, right? And I thought, well, do I need to go check the news? No, I'm not going to check the news because they're all idiots. They're not going to tell me anything that I haven't already gotten from God himself, you know? Yeah, those earthly things lose their interest to us.

But with what you guys are saying, I mean, it really highlights the fact that it's such a gracious thing that the Holy Spirit enlightens or illuminates His Word to us to show us Christ. That's the whole point, is to show us Christ in the Word. And it's all in grace, because if it wasn't for that work, Then we would be, like you said, J.D., groping in the dark. Even with the text of Scripture in front of us, without the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, we'd be blind, we'd be lost. Yeah, it's very gracious work. Well, I'll close in prayer there.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this great opportunity to just fellowship around your Word together. We thank you for just the wonderful ways that you have illuminated the different individuals of this body to be able to share the truth of your Word with one another, to the building up and enriching of each one of our We just thank you for that. We can be encouraged by the fact that it is you who is at work through us to draw men to you. And that we can just be used as common vessels in that work of yours, so that you would be glorified. We pray that many, many more would come to knowledge of the salvation that's provided in Jesus Christ. We pray for Yuri specifically, and so many others that could be named in their salvation. And Lord, we just thank you for your boundless grace in all that you do and continue to do in our lives, in illuminating, enlightening us to the truth of your word. We thank you for that work. In Jesus' name, Amen.