The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit lesson 38 cont.
Miles Driedger · Jan 8, 2023
Holy Spirit (2021-23), No. 92
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261929496695

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

All right, well, I'm still warming up here in the basement of the Wimbledon. Hey, is that Macaulay's coming in? Yes, we're here. How's it going? It's good to see you guys. So we are on question four of lesson 38. I'm averaging 1.5 questions a week, I think. I'm going to try to pick that up significantly today, see if we can get through some things here. But the last question that we were on was question number three, and it was a big question.

It was, what does Ephesians 1.10 tell us about God's ultimate purpose for the Word? And really, we could just keep going on that for weeks and weeks.

We talked about how all of the Old Testament scriptures are guiding us to one thing, really one person, and that's Jesus Christ himself. And one of the things that we looked at was 1 Peter 1, 10-11, and the fact that the authors themselves of the Old Testament scriptures searched to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ was indicating.

Since between that last lesson, I guess we had a bit of a break here, and now I was actually listening to one of Dr. McGee's messages, and he just had this fantastic little bit that really related to this, and he used John 5, 39 to 40, where Jesus is dealing with the Jewish leaders, and the Jews were rejecting him as the Messiah, and he gives them this rebuke, and he says, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.

He says, it is these that testify about me, and you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have eternal life. So, it's just really marvelously clear in that verse that the Scriptures testify about Jesus. And then, if you drop down into verses 46 and 47 of John 5, he's continuing on with that line of thought, and he says, For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

So, in other words, the Old Testament properly understood and properly taught points only to one person, and that's Jesus Christ. And yet when he came, when he was revealed, the majority of people didn't recognize him. Though they were searching the scriptures, they were looking for the wrong thing, essentially. And when Jesus showed up, they didn't even recognize him. So all the discussion last time was to answer question three, and I think to sum it up, I said all the scripture is intended to lead us to Christ, to know Him. That's the point. It's all to know Him.

Last time JD brought up Acts 321 in connection to what we were talking about there. This is going to be hard to get through all the questions if I just keep adding to this one. But before we move on, I wanted to look at Acts 321 here. So I'm going to read the passage in Acts 3 from verse 17 to 21, and then I'll let, if JD wants to, I'll let him kind of make his comments on what he was seeing there, and then I did some study and have some other thoughts here.

So it says, and now brethren, sorry, and now brethren, and we want to keep in mind that this is Jewish brethren here. This is Peter talking to the Jews, and He says, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he has thus fulfilled. Therefore, repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive, until the period, literally there are times, of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient time.

So, So, yeah, I know, JD, that was two or three weeks ago now, but you brought that up in the study and we just didn't have time to really get into it. But in connection to what we were studying, I wanted to touch on that before we move on here. But did you have a comment on that or a thought?

Yes, I think it was just a progressive revelation, the purpose of the Old Testament in revealing they were operating in ignorance, yet they knew the prophecies, but they didn't know how they were to be fulfilled. And we're just talking about how the Holy Spirit works through the Old Testament believers through prophecy. in order to reveal the person of Christ. So everything that the Old Testament is pointing to is revealed and fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. And so while they operated in ignorance, they still had ample amount of information in order to believe in the Christ to come, the Messiah that was to come.

And so that was kind of my thinking there. I think. It's been a while. Yeah. I know it wasn't actually. I'd forgotten, but you mentioned that. And then I was like, reviewing my notes from last time, like, oh yeah, I jotted that down. But as I kind of dug into it, I realized it's actually really neat because the verses we just looked at in 1 Peter 1, again, it's Peter, right? And the same exact theme or idea is there in kind of summary form.

So in 1 Peter 1, 11, it says, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating, as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. So, the same theme is there, that by the mouth of all the prophets, they spoke of two things. So, what I see Peter is doing, he's kind of taking, this is the whole theme of the Old Testament, it's all pointed to Christ, but he breaks it into two specific kind of categories, two specific sort of sub-themes, if you want to say, but first is the suffering of Christ, and second is the glories to follow, or in Acts he calls it the times of refreshing. So it's all pointing to Christ, but it's pointing to both his suffering and his glory, his glorious reign. So, in Acts, Peter's explaining to these Jews that the suffering of the Messiah, Jesus, has been fulfilled, but that the glories to follow are delayed until Israel repents and returns, as he translated there.

Now, this is really neat because as we get into question four, and we connect that thought, those kind of themes, you'll see a really kind of neat connection as we get into question four. But as we do that, just keep in mind that the Christ would suffer, and that the glorious reign is yet to come. So let's look at question four.

And the question is, are there contradictions in the Bible? and why, or why not, I guess. Okay, now it's open for answering. I'd say no. All right, one no. We're going to take majority vote here and decide if the Bible is true. Another no. Another no for Cheryl. God, the Holy Spirit is the author. Exactly. There can't be. I think we often talk about, when it comes to interpretation in this subject, there may be inconsistencies with specific words in terms of, you know, we can't be sure about the exact word in certain cases, but doctrinally speaking, there is a complete unity of the Scripture. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I had written down the same thing, Cheryl. I said, I mean, Scripture is perfect because it has a perfect author, right? He's not contradicting himself anywhere.

You know, however, if we read Scripture without recognizing certain critical distinctions, you'll find contradictions all over the place. And that, frankly, is where many, many believers kind of find themselves sitting, honestly. You know, I wrote down just a couple, because it's not just in details. I mean, you could find a verse ripped out of context and see how it contradicts with another verse ripped out of context. That's easy enough to do, right? But you'll find contradictions in big somatic portions of Scripture.

For instance, You know, throughout the Old Testament, you just read the Psalms and look at all of the sorrowful lament over sin. In fact, I listened to a Reformed – well, I didn't really listen to much of it – a Reformed teacher talking about the importance of lament over sin and sorrowing over our sin. But if we go to, you know, if we're just saying 1 John 1, 9, just confess, you know, You know, it's done. We admit that. We say the same thing as the Lord about that. We don't sorrow and lament.

I mean, you might have certain feelings, but there's this big difference, huge difference, between what we see in the Old Testament in Israel and what the Church is. So that's one, but here's another one, is that in the Old Testament, in Israel, suffering is a terrible consequence of disobedience to the Covenant. For Israel, suffering and trials were the consequences of disobedience to the Covenant that they had with God. When we come to the Church in the New Testament, how common is the theme in the New Testament that we rejoice in sufferings, that we rejoice in trials? Just a couple examples are Romans 5-3. You know, we exult in tribulations. And then, of course, the famous James 1-2, consider it all joy, whenever you encounter various trials. But the Church and Israel are incredibly different on this point. You know, Israel didn't rejoice over trials. That would have been inconsistent for them. But we do.

And this is where it starts to connect with what I was just saying there, and looking at Acts 3, and the sufferings of of Christ, because if we ask the question, why do we rejoice in trials? And we've been looking at the fact that the first major theme about Christ is that he must suffer. And we are the body of Christ. And we've been so united to him that there's a suffering that is part and parcel of being in Christ.

Philippians 3.10, you know, that we may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death.

In Acts 5.41, you know, the Apostles rejoice to suffer because they are accounted worthy to suffer for His name. It was like this badge of authenticity, almost. They rejoice because they're like, hey, we're in Christ and we suffer just like Him. So, I guess I'm kind of really beating on the drum here of this suffering with Christ. So, you know, because if we're in Christ, then I think we should understand that suffering is part and parcel of that. Miles? Yeah. So do you think that the Old Testament, under the Jewish system, suffering and as a result of your own personal sins, and then you come to the New Testament and suffering has a whole different view. Why isn't that a contradiction?

We should be able to answer that question because I think that the Lord Jesus, there's no question as you read the Gospels, that the rejection of him and the desire to do away with him is fairly soon in his ministry and he suffers and everybody from him who will willfully walk with the Lord will suffer. You just will. And I think the reason is that the world will not have him. And if he's the one that you have, the one that you would have, then you can't expect to have anything in your life any different than his.

And even though we shy away from suffering and we don't have the courage sometimes to stand for him because we're afraid of the suffering, still it's there. mm-hmm you know Mike I guess what I'm thinking about it's not only with that is then this all come down to kind of the the misinterpretation of the the three three avenues of Scripture, the Jews, the Church, and Gentiles, that we confuse the, you know, between Jews and the Church.

We, you know, have covenant theology. You have, you know, and a lot of people even today, you know, it's... He deals with us on an individual basis. In the Old Testament, it was in the nation of Israel. And all the contradictions, I think, or the misinterpretation of You know, the three avenues that are through scripture, you know, what's with Gentiles, what's with Jews, and what's with the church. And you know, for the church, we're, you know, we, as you said, we will suffer, you know, take up your cross daily and all of the different things that we are to suffer. But that's on an individual basis with our relationship with Christ. Jews were always, you know, it's the nation of Israel. Even the blessings to come are going to be based on the Jewish nation.

And so I think major contradictions come from the misinterpretation of that, you know, the Sermon on the Mount and all the Beatitudes and all that. that has nothing to do with us, but people try and make that, or the Ten Commandments that they apply to us, and all those. I think the root of it all is that misinterpretation that creates the contradiction.

Yeah, I agree with that, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that if I grow up in a denominational environment, I'm taught the denominations doctrine. So when I, at some point in my life, I begin to study scripture and I impose on the objective Word of God my doctrine.

And Reformed theology does that, you know. One of the coolest things about what we call dispensation is that we will let the Word of God teach us. We're not trying to make it sound or come. which ends up being a misinterpretation, like Courtney's saying. If you go into the Word of God and have it teach you, then it gets clear and you can see the distinctions and things that apparently contradict but really don't.

Absolutely. I think it's, you know, it's so interesting, right, when you import the dispensation of law into the church, and you try to live under the concept that, you know, if you can obey, you know, certain laws or certain rules, then you will be blessed. I mean, you're at odds with with the entire idea of what the body of Christ is, what the Church is. And you'll never understand what it is to be in Christ, because it's so radically different from what God is doing with Israel. And you're right, I mean, to be an individual in Old Testament Israel, It was the nation, they got dealt with the nation on a national kind of level, and you could be a believer and you could still suffer because the nation as a whole was going against the Lord and His Word.

But I actually came across this really interesting, it's a really awesome three verses at the end of Habakkuk. And he's in this situation where, yeah, the nation is getting creamed. He's just received this vision of the nation being creamed by Babylon. And this is the way he ends off. It's a song. It's actually a praise song.

And he says, though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, Though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flocks should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he has made my feet like hinds feet and makes me walk on my high places."

And as an individual in the nation of Israel, Habakkuk was seeing all this disaster and destruction, and he knew full well that this was coming because of national disobedience, and this is the consequence. But as an individual believer, he's like, okay, I'm looking around and I can see the destruction, I can see the loss of crops and cattle and so forth, and yet I can exalt in the Lord. So I found that's a really neat interesting example of an individual believer who still rejoiced in the midst of his trials because he knew God, the God of his salvation.

And yet, the sufferings that he was enduring were not necessarily because of his personal disobedience, but because of the national disobedience. But in our case, as the church, that the trials and the sufferings that we receive are not because of, you know, disobedience to some law standard. It's completely different. And we don't rejoice despite the trials, but we rejoice in the trials.

I see JD reaching for the button. Sorry about that. Just along the lines of exactly what you're saying, Philippians 3.10, I mean, it talks about that I may know him. And I think that's the result, but at the end it says, and the fellowship of his sufferings.

So one of the things that the Old Testament believers did not ever have is a fellowship with their suffering, right? And the purpose of this fellowship of suffering with Christ is that you may know him. And that's really the point of why we suffer. And I think oftentimes we're like, oh, God's going to teach me this or teach me that. And it's all about what I'm supposed to be learning. Well, really, it's that you may know Him in the fellowship of His sufferings. And I think that that's just such a dispensationally different view of how one experiences suffering under God's sovereignty. For us, it's a fellowship of suffering, and it's in a grace environment. And the whole purpose is that we may know Him.

So, just thought I'd add that in there. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. Let me add one more thing from The Hungry Heart from yesterday. Takes a good many years of sin and failure in order to see through our own motives. Drop down a little bit. It says all of our motives will be tested by fire. We are seeking personal influence, popularity, reputation, prestige, acceptableness, success. We may think our motives are perfectly pure, but not until we pass into daily death, death to any and all of the above, and find ourselves despised and rejected of men, our names cast out as evil and held up seemingly of our work, do we really come to face the true purpose and motive of our having any place in the service of God. The cross separating us from everything Adamic but within and without is a good test of motives.

I think motives are a huge issue with believers. Why do I do what I do? And I must admit in my life I've put a lot of holy water on a lot of stuff I've done that I wanted to do. Yeah, that was a really good reading. I always say that every day, but that one was really good. Yeah. No, but I read that yesterday, too. And I I did. Yeah, I saw that in there. I always think, how many hungry hearts can I quote in a lesson?

But yeah, it's that's that is There really is this whole process, and that's why I say it's such a distinction between Israel and the Church. We are, as believers, going through this process wherein we know that the Lord is using these trials and these sufferings to carry out a very specific thing, and that's to conform us to the likeness of Christ. that His glory would be displayed through us by His power, and it happens largely through these trials and sufferings that we undergo, because it's this process of death, kind of stripping away the old man, if that makes sense. Or like I said to JD, we were talking about this before Christmas, and even things like the Lord is just, I think, working to peel our fingers away from these earthly things. And so many of these trials do exactly that. Peels us away from the earthly things and focuses our eyes on Christ. That's the goal, if we respond to it the way He intends.

And it's not a question of, for the Old Testament believer, it was, okay, so I'm receiving this discipline here, this trial or whatever, but what law am I not keeping? What do I need to do here? What do I need to go back and fix and do right? What can I do better next time kind of a thing? How can I try harder next time sort of as I keep the law?

That's not what we have. It's something completely different. So, anyway, in answer to the question, are there contradictions in the Bible? No, absolutely not. And yet, so many people are living a contradiction and trying to put themselves under parts of Scripture because of a large-scale misinterpretation of Scripture. But the contradiction is not there. You just got to know who you are. Any other thoughts on that or should we go to question five?

I was just going to say that you know how, like Jesus said, if you don't forgive a person, my Heavenly Father will not forgive you. And Paul says, forgive because you've been forgiven. And it's kind of what Courtney was saying. It's the whole difference between being under the law and not being under the law. And it would seem like a big contradiction for Jesus, who's God, to say that. And then Paul to say, forgive because you've been forgiven.

And that could be misinterpreted easily. Yeah, I know. And people say, but Jesus said it. I mean, everything that Jesus said applies to us, right? And no, and that's a part of that major misunderstanding. So Jesus came speaking to Israel, you know, and he was Talking to them about law and and so so many of things that he said and we and of course we we want to know what he said, but we need to understand it in Context or or yeah, you'll come up with tons of contradictions with what we with what we have in you know for the church, but Really good point Russ.

Yeah Well question five why are quotes in the New Testament sometimes not exact verbal quotations from the Old Testament and So in five minutes, we're going to knock that out. Did anyone read the chapter or remember reading the chapter when you read it? What Raidot, he gave one example in there. He compared Psalm 40, verse 6, with Hebrews 10, 5. There's a difference of one line in there where in Psalms it says, my ears hast thou opened, and then in Hebrews where it's quoting, everything else is a direct quotation, but it says instead of my ears hast thou opened, it says a body hast thou prepared for me.

And Rhinos is dealing with the question of, wow, you know, doesn't that indicate that, you know, scripture is It is fallible, and it made a mistake here, it made an improper quotation of the Old Testament, right? So, clearly one of them's wrong, right? Righto, this is what Righto says, he says, I speak of this to show the freedom of the Spirit in making use of His own words. At the fitting time, He makes use of what He had previously said, and adds fresh and appropriate truth to it. What do you guys think of that? Does it make sense? I've wondered about that before, you know, why such a difference there? Why when, you know, sometimes in the New Testament close to the Old Testament like that, why do we see a difference?

The difference in the 40th Psalm and Hebrews 5, is that the contrast? Yeah, so I think it's on page 209 in the printed book of the person who works the Holy Spirit. Yeah, in the 40th Psalm he says, sacrifices and offering thou does not desire my ears have thou opened. That's verse 6. Yeah. Hebrews 5 says, sacrifices and offerings thou would not But a body hast thou prepared for me. Yeah. Why is it different, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right.

It says here in place of the opened ear, obedient to the least whisper, the spirit gives the added facts appropriate to the New Testament of the incarnation of the Son of God. His whole earthly life was one perfect act of obedience. And then, yeah, as I read there, you know, because of the fact that the New Testament is also the inspired Word of God, the Holy Spirit can make use of what He said before, and He can add new revelation to it, right in the middle of it like that, and give us a deeper truth that's not contradictory, it's completely consistent, but He's added revelation to it. And I just tagged on the question, can you and I do that with scripture?

You know? No, we shouldn't. Right? That's the Holy Spirit's job, to reveal that new information, that added revelation. So we don't take scripture and add to it, or take away from it. We don't change it. But when the Holy Spirit quotes Himself, He can add to it. I like how you said the fact that the spirit gives the adage back appropriate. I think that's the term there, the appropriate New Testament. So he builds on the revelation that's appropriate for the New Testament.

Now we have the body. We have the entire body. And that was not made clear until Christ had suffered. Yeah. And so forth. So the added fact becomes appropriate for New Testament believers, whereas it was not appropriate for the Old Testament believers in Psalm 40. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Thank you.

When you say that, I think, you know, my memorization skills are not the best, so I may paraphrase a verse, you know, to somebody before I would draw them exactly to the quote. So, I don't know if that fits in. I'm not changing scripture, but I may, in talking to somebody, paraphrase a verse and then take it to the actual verse. That's not exactly what you're saying, but it's, you know, I'm not changing the word. paraphrasing it until such time I can bring it to the... Oh yeah, I mean and that's the same issue when we look at different translations of scripture, you know, we're all speaking English and you know none of us is quoting the, you know, well most of us aren't quoting the Greek, you know, so So it's always going to be slightly different, you know, put into a different language and so forth, and put into your own vernacular, it's going to come out slightly different, but we're not... the idea... and sometimes that happens, and sometimes we do distort Scripture, and eventually we go back and look at the actual verse, and we're like, wait a second, I don't think I'm quoting that or paraphrasing that quite right, and we learn and we, you know, so we do make, you know, errors in the way we refer to Scripture, but we should never be, you know, intending to change what Scripture means, that's the... That's the key, right? So we're not going to get through the next question.

There's a lot left here, but we can introduce it at least here. Question number six is, how do we know that the Bible is a complete revelation from God? And that's a great and big question. I think it's a really important one to wrestle with because it has to do with, is the Bible that you hold in your hands, is that complete? And how do we know?

Can someone come along and be a prophet and add to it? Why or why not? And man, when I got into studying this, there's a lot of really neat things throughout the New Testament that tie into this. I had to cut a lot of stuff out of what I had kind of looked at and so forth, because it wasn't all maybe directly connected to that thought. But a lot of really neat things that I saw in Paul about how clearly he knew and understood that he was writing scripture. It comes up over and over again. I hadn't really seen it until I really started to study that and look at it. It comes up a lot when he's writing Timothy.

He makes a number of references to that, something along those lines. I'd encourage you to study that out a little bit, and we'll have to get back to questions six and seven next week, I guess. So, let's close in prayer there. Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to spend time in your Word, Lord. We were studying the personal work of the Holy Spirit, and it is the Spirit who has authored and inspired the Word, and so we want to study and understand carefully here what it is that the Bible is, what it is that the Word of God is, does it have.

Does it have contradictions in it? Is it reliable? Is it trustworthy? Is it complete? And Laura, I just pray that you would continue to lead us to greater conviction of the truth in these areas as we continue to study your Word together. And we just thank you for the things that you've taught us this morning from your Word. In Jesus' name, Amen.