the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit Lesson 39
JD McCulley · Jan 22, 2023
Holy Spirit (2021-23), No. 94
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261929582943

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

Well, okay. Good morning. Let's jump into Lesson 39. Miles set us up. We're doing a review here. We've talked about this before. It was a couple years ago now, probably. But I've been thinking a lot about this inspiration side of things. So, Rideout talks a lot about the importance of the Holy Spirit and the inspiration of the Scriptures. Our first question, and I'll maybe use that to dovetail into some personal thoughts, but the question is, how does God make use of the human element in inspiration? How does he make use, I think that's the key word there, how does he use the human element in inspiration?

Why did he do that? It would have been quite simple to just record his thoughts verbatim from his own mouth without humans. Couldn't he have done that? But why did he use silly old David? Why did he use rebellious Paul? Why did he use these men to communicate the words that we hold on to so dearly Without them, we'd be lost. We would not know how to pray. We wouldn't know how to trust. We would not have an object to our faith. We wouldn't know the person of the Lord Jesus without these men that God used. So why did he do it that way? What do you guys think?

The way you asked that question really helped me think this through all of a sudden, because I've written down, you know, in the question, I've written down my notes, you know, what Rydow said, you know, he used men as instruments and so forth. But the question of why he would use, you know, silly old David or, you know, it really reminded me of 2 Corinthians 4, right?

Common vessels used to display his glory. And I think it has something to do with his grace. But as far as I'm going to go, someone else can. again. That's really interesting. I felt the same way. It's like God could have used you or me. He didn't, but very well could have. We're no different in terms of the fact that we're earthen vessels just like Paul, just like David, just like Daniel, just like John.

These guys were real struggling human beings and here God is You mentioned grace. Why is it gracious that God would use fallen human beings to communicate the most valuable information ever? Period. Why would he do that? I think partly because for me, when I look at Paul and his life, and what he was before he became a believer and the change in him. There's just something about the humanness of Paul and all these Bible teachers that makes it more real to me that a real man like Paul could have an incredible change he did. And yet God used him to teach us. The chief of sinners teaching us. It's really good. I think you're on to something there, Russ. The chief of sinners. That's just such a non-human way of thinking about things.

I mean, if I'm going to deliver a message to you guys, And it's important. I'm going to make sure that all the right people are involved and I'm going to make sure that the right message is communicated to the T. You know, when we write emails in business, when you sign a contract to seal a deal on a real estate, you know, transaction or whatever, you're using a lot of very special and important legal language to protect yourself. Was God haphazard in using humans to communicate the most important things that you would ever need to know? Obviously, the answer is no, but why? You know, J.D., one thing, and right out, like, you'll not misunderstand me when I say, in one sense, the Bible is all human. All the instruments used in its production were men. Think about how else would he do it?

You know, in the Old Testament, was writing on the wall? Was there a handwritten? I forget which. Golden plates discovered in the hills of... Yeah, exactly, you know. I mean, kind of in the most simplistic sense, how else could he have done it other than, yes, you find the whole inscribed Word of God Yeah, under a tree somewhere, or, you know, you have to do that through humans. So, you know, what is the alternative? I don't know, but I would only say, and it's a great question, right? But he didn't have to do it that way. He would have had many options, but yet he chose to do it that way.

And, you know, we talked a lot about last week the human aspect of the Lord himself, the Lord Jesus. We went into the fact that he is both man and divine, he is God. We look at the book of Psalms and we just see David. I mean, you know, it right out talks about the sighing of the prisoner, the sad confession of sin, the pleading for mercy, the humble gratitude for all blessings, the happy outbursts of praise and deliverance.

I've got a lot of books in here telling me about how to be a better manager, how to give proper feedback to the people that I work with, how to stay on time. We've got engineering resources that are Exact and they're built on mathematical principles that will support the weight of the thing that you need or deliver the water in the place that you need We've got medical texts. We called it a practice earlier today. So there's that but nonetheless we've got we've got principles that are so outlined in in very rote educational perspectives and yet here you have a The most important information that you'll ever hear in your life, and it's written from a guy like David, who's pleading for mercy. You know, he gets humbled, he sins, he has happy outbursts of praise, but he's up and he's down and he's all around and yet God entrusted him. to communicate very important truths about who he is and what he's all about.

This idea of, I love how Rideout says, that the Spirit spoke by David, but David spoke in the Spirit. That's the key, I think. That was kind of the takeaway for this first question in my mind, is that yes, you got David, and the Spirit spoke by David, but David spoke in the Spirit. Do you think that we have that privilege as well? Maybe not for the inspiration of Scripture, but do you find that same principle working in the believer's life in the church age? Not for inspiration, not for the writing of Scripture, but this idea that the Spirit spoke by David and David spoke in the Spirit.

Sure, I think so. Isn't that the earth and vessel thing, right? Yeah, I think so. You know, when you think about in Genesis that God created man and his image and his likeness, he wanted a creature he could communicate with and would communicate back with him. He wanted a creature that was like him in the sense that he understood him and God could have a relationship with the creature. And so everything he's done from the beginning of creating Adam all the way to the cross of Christ and the body of Christ, the church and dwelling of the Holy Spirit, it's all based on relationship. And so he goes out of his way, I think, to communicate to us through us. And so that there is a connection between him and us. in his word and all of the inspiration that with all these men through all, you know, the whole history of the Bible, it's all about relationship.

You guys agree? Yeah. I'm just looking at, Miles Stanford wrote some thoughts around inspiration. I'm not sure exactly what he was going through. You know, Miles writes oftentimes from a place where he's dealing with error and he's trying to correct that error. And he writes personally and sometimes it applies to our situation.

Christian climate of the day other times. It's maybe a little bit more of his own climate when he was writing, but I'm just gonna read this to you and then see where we go from here, but the Christian be he fundamentalist Plymouth brethren and then he had the term neo-evangelical or whatever I like how he just is like or whatever you are who does not rely reckon upon the work of the crucifying cross to deal with his sin nature and That Christian is in peril of losing his Bible. If the old man is left free to dominate, he is liable to sooner or later rise up and actually start to point in the Word of God where there's error. Then, Miles says, and this is where the contrast comes in, Let the crossless Christian insist upon its infallibility, and it will still prove to be a broken reed to his broken faith. The believer who is abiding above in living union of nature with the one who says the scripture cannot be broken, to him there is no question. He knows him as life. He has and relies upon the mind of Christ.

How is it that these men communicated the very mind of Christ to us? The moment we lose the purpose of the cross is the moment we start to see error in God's Word. It's the moment that we try to find the places where God has to be inconsistent. That's what Miles is talking about.

To him, the Bible is God-inspired to the believing, to the faith, to the walking believer. The Bible is God-inspired. To him, his present Bible is everything its author declares it to be. Everything to thoroughly and eternally furnish him unto all good works, unto the good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2.10. I just thought that was really interesting here is that it's not so much different than our own walk.

These men all throughout history had to be dependent upon the Lord to convey his word, to convey the truth. And they went through the sacrificial system in order to recognize where they stood before God, right? They had to deal with the issue of atonement. They had to deal with the issues of what a blood sacrifice meant. For us, we look at the cross and we, ourselves, have the privilege of having the Spirit speak through us as well. Not for revelation, but for direction in our life, for understanding how do we deal with this issue? How do we think about this issue?

So, God uses free agents, and the thing is that He uses a language that's appropriate to each of those individual men. David wrote differently than Isaiah and Paul and John, and they had a different experience, yet they wrote in unity. Why? Only because they had the Spirit doing the speaking through them.

You know, we often talk about the Lord doing the living through us, When I think about inspiration, not for scripture, but when I think about being led by the Spirit, you know, we're not different in that way. Does that make sense or is it too... A couple of things, you know, two ends of the equation. The first is the inspiration and using humans and that.

In John 14 verse 26, Christ speaking, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. So the Holy Spirit, you know, when He told them that the Holy Spirit would come and bring remembrance of all this, because I'm thinking, you know, I think here's John writing, what, in 85 or whatever, when he's writing the book of John, I forget, it's 70 or 80, I don't know, when he wrote it, and he's writing this history. Well, how did he do that, you know? I have a hard time remembering what, you know, last Monday. Yeah. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit that will send him on, he will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I said to you. So they were able to, through the Holy Spirit, remember all these things and bring it forth.

And the flip side of that is in 2 Timothy 3.16, All Scripture is inspired by God and what profitable for teaching and reproof for correction for training and righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work. So that's where I think the inspiration for us now, we use that inspired word to be used for all those good works that God has laid out before us. And so it's the inspired word. It was the Holy Spirit who worked through all of these men. Now we use that word that they have to complete the work that Christ has for us now. I love that.

I think one of the things that I was thinking about when I was looking through these questions and thinking through what Rideout said was how does inspiration, obviously we want to have the truth. We want to know and be confident. that we have the very Word of God. And we know that the person in the work of the Holy Spirit was very involved with that in order to protect and keep in harmony the very thoughts of God through all of these different free agents. But my question kept being like, well, What does that really mean, other than just being sure that we have God's Word?

And I think that what you just said, the word remembrance, is really important for us. First of all, we have confidence that the Spirit Himself guided these individual men in their own free agency, their own language, and constructed the Word in perfect harmony allow their natural feelings to be interjected and I don't know if you want to call it an interjection but allow them to be recorded and communicated and understood for what reason and I think it's remembrance that you remember what I've told you such a key and then you know you mentioned 2nd Timothy 316 it's not just this scripture it's all And so we have to define what is all. And Myles did a great job of communicating the complete canon, as we've talked about before. God began and completed, the bookends are there in the scripture for your remembrance, to edify you in your faith.

They're not there just to make sure that God said, hey, this is how it really is. It's for you. Individually for your intimacy for your relationship with him that's why he did it this way so that you can relate to a David you can relate to a Paul and His desire to have that personhood to create personhood in his creature so that he can have communication and Have that conversation with you and have you remember the things that your faith should cling on to and ultimately trust is a big reason why inspiration is such a Key factor it's not just for the fact that hey We can teach a class like this and we can be absolutely sure this is what God said, but what does that mean to you? you know and so I was just going to say, J.D. and I talked a little bit recently about the idea of a hungry heart. Alyssa and I were talking last night about somebody who kind of has a hard heart right now, and just the difference between the hard heart and the soft heart. And I think that has a lot to do with, kind of ties in with that quote you were sharing from Miles, which I'd love to have the the reference to as well, so I can look that up, because that's a really good quote. But, you know, I'm going back to what Mike was saying, that the Word is intended to be intensely personal.

And so, you know, so it was revealed through men, you know, who knew God. And we are to be people who know Him, to have his word illuminated to us. I'm going to finish that quote real quick because I think this is the last part of it here that's really important.

So he quoted Ephesians 2.10 about walking in the good works that God has already prepared for you.

But then he goes on, he says, for the believer, hid with Christ in God, there can be no quibbling. His present Bible is inerrant. infallible and authoritative. Question one aspect and you'll lose all of it. Trust all and you have his word for it. I think that's, Mike, I've written down something on a post-it note somewhere around here. God said it, that settles it. And then I added my thought, do you believe it?

All Scripture is given, and that's 2 Timothy 3.16, he quotes the fact that it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness. The moment we lose sight of the cross is the moment we lose sight of the inspiration and infallibility of God's Word. That's his main theme there.

I've got to wrestle with that a little bit, not in a bad way, just because it's like, oh, the sin nature absolutely cannot handle infallibility. That's not what the sin nature wants. What does the sin nature want to do to God's word? Fix it? Make it align with my own perspectives? What else? Any other thoughts? Mike, you look like you're about to say something.

Well, the thought hit me about Romans 8, where he talks about that we don't know how to pray as we ought to pray, and that the Spirit intercedes for us to the mind of God, and he lets us know what God's mind is about things. I think the Spirit of God is always tracking each one of us individually to keep us in tune to what God's word says. and what his thoughts and his mind is about things.

It's interesting to read the news of the day from the perspective of whatever the event is or whoever is reporting it has no idea what God's mind is. And so his perspective is somewhere out way out there in left field. It makes no sense. He thinks he's profound, but he's foolish.

And so God is very careful, I think, for those who belong to him. He's very careful to keep us informed and to keep us tracking. You know, sometimes it's through a trial, but sometimes it's just through, well, let me show you what I really meant about that. And bang, he shows you. Kind of jumping on that, two different thoughts. The first is the Word.

I always say He hasn't left us alone. He's left us with the Word and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It's a combination of those two that direct us in life and give us the hope, all those things. It still comes down to the same thing with Dari Harpon. You have to believe it. But, you know, we have the inspired word of God. We have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Those two combine to give us direction, wisdom, comfort, everything about our life in Christ.

The other fact today, it just seems we look at what the Holy Spirit did back then, you know, when he inspired these men and all that, and it comes back to that same song. Is it the same spirit today that indwells us? You know, we always kind of, well, he worked, he was back then and he did all this stuff and he was different back then. He's the exact same spirit indwelling us as inspired those men and brought to remembrance.

You know, I don't know how many times, you know, in life where suddenly a scripture will come up or I read a scripture and it's completely different, you know, what the Lord is showing me. And it's the Holy Spirit doing that. And so, you know, the Holy Spirit's the same today as it was back then. You know, and I think a lot of times we try and compartmentalize the Holy Spirit as working differently when, you know, it came upon David, or, you know, indwelling these men who inspired, you know, wrote the Scriptures. The same Spirit indwells us today.

That's very humbling and very exciting, too. I'm amazed at how proactive the Spirit is in each one of our lives. If you look back over last week, how many times has the Spirit influenced what you thought, what you did, that He was there, that circumstances were, and that we were interacting with Him or with the Lord Jesus in a manner that He's always there all the time and it's important for him. It seems more important to him than to us that he keeps us informed. You've heard the term kindred spirit. Yeah.

One of the cool things about that word is, for example, Miles and Alyssa, totally different culture, not totally, but very different, unique in its own way, different part of the world, yet we have this kindred spirit. In new tribes, they used to use the term one-talk. When you had someone from your area of the world that showed up on the tribe, on the field, the mission field, and you could actually start to talk to them about the cowboys or whatever. They kind of call it like a one-talk. And then they went on to explain it as like, and once you found out that they were dispensational or that they read some of the same books that you've read and have learned from some of the same teachers that you've learned from, you had this one talk with them. But what's interesting about the one talk concept or the kindred spirit concept is it's actually that.

It's the spirit of God Himself that creates a communion where I can hop on the phone and talk through my most deep, dark challenges with Mike or whomever in a moment's notice and we speak the same language. And that has to do with the fact that God's Word is inspired by that same Spirit. And like Courtney said, we have that Spirit working within us. He is developing the very mind of Christ. So when we communicate with each other, the reason we love being together and having these conversations and sharing these times together in the Word is because we all are walking with that same Lord Jesus and His Spirit and He is opening our eyes and illuminating us to the very truths that we need to remember and we remember them together. And that's what creates that fellowship with us. And I just find that to be so refreshing.

I spend all of my week working with folks that I do not have that kind of conversation with. I cannot talk and be understood in the same way that I can with you. And that's the grace that Miles was talking about earlier. We remember together and by grace we have the ability to communicate around the things that God is doing and it changes a person's entire life when you have that conversation with other believers and you're able to have that conversation through the Word of God.

So, I'm over time, but I'm very excited about this topic. I kind of took it a little bit off the rails. Inspiration and fallibility and authority. That's all like hermeneutics and very theological, but I was just starting to look at it from the perspective of how God brings the truth of his word, the intimacy of his word to me, and he does it for you as well.

And then we get to talk about it and remember it together. That's a game changer for all the situations that we're going through, health or financial or kids, whatever the situation. we can communicate and remember together because we have not only the Word of God, we also have the very Spirit that inspired and led and guided those same men. We have that Spirit. So I'll end there and we'll pray and we'll get ready for a second hour here.

Father, how we thank you for your preservation of your Word and how you used human beings, free agents, in their own way You use geography and culture, and there's so much to the Word of God, but illumination and inspiration comes from your spirit. And Lord, we're thankful that you not only guided those men, but that you guide us in the remembering of those things, and you do it by your grace. And so Lord, we just thank you for that. We pray for next hour and for Mike as he delivers another lesson in the book of Romans, Christianity 101. I pray that we would just continue to grow in the foundational truths of who we are in Christ, because you said it and that settles it. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.