The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit Lesson 40 cont.

So we're working, by the way, thank you for your patience last week. For those who probably have heard, I didn't, I lost, I couldn't find my flash drive in California. So I was totally noteless. And so, and once I'd signed off from the class, I found the flash drive. So, Sometimes I wonder why the Lord does things the way he does. Maybe he wanted some of you guys to talk more than you normally do, which was great. I loved it. Today we are in lesson 40. And one of the things that we got talked about a little bit last week, but had to do with the question two.

And the question is, how does the author define the contemporary use of prophecy. Don't we always think, when you hear the word prophecy, don't you always think about the predictive nature of it? That a prophet is someone who says, well, here's something new, either from the Lord or I'm prophesying that an event's going to happen, and it does happen. And if you, like in Old Testament times, if you were a Jew and you were claim to be a prophet and you prophesied and it didn't happen, your next stop was the rock pile. So you had to be pretty accurate if you were an Old Testament prophet. A New Testament prophet, if we have the complete Word of God, which we do, how would you define what a New Testament prophet would do? It's not new revelation. What's that? No. No, it doesn't. It's not new revelation.

It's edifying and exhorting. A couple of statements from Rideout. He said, this special application by the Spirit of God of truth suited to the special need of the saints. So we'll tag off of that. The principle is evident. and we can apply it to the entire body of scripture. We have a perfect word and we've been enlightened to understand it, but we still need to have it applied to mind and heart and life. The word of season, the word in season is the word of prophecy.

So I think This is one of those spiritual gifts that I think people may have it and not realize they have it, that they're able to say things in just the right moment to a person that applies the word. And you find, I find anyway, And a lot of the questions I get are application questions.

How do I apply Romans 6? How do I apply Galatians 2.20? How do I apply positional truth into my condition? Okay?

And I really think there are two factors there. One is, if I really, the first factor is that the Spirit of God will make us want to apply it. Because otherwise we don't. We don't. We just pass it on as another doctrine. And two is, once I want it, Then I enter into that Romans 7 struggle where I'm trying to do it myself and I can't get it done because the flesh can't pull it off, the Romans 7, down to the point where, like Paul says in 7.23, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Well, the point is that he already has been delivered and he knows it, but from a practical standpoint, he doesn't. He hasn't figured out yet how to apply it.

I might know in my mind that I'm free from sin, yet be totally frustrated because I'm sinning all the time. I'll give you an example of a guy that I talk to a lot, who his big issue is that he cusses. And he is a guy who is in charge of people, and he's so intense about what he's doing that he can't keep his language. And he knows it's a bad witness, and he's trying as hard as he can, but he loses it. And what I observed with him is that he's right in the middle of Romans 7, trying as hard as he can out of the flesh to make his flesh not do that. And the harder he tries, the worse it gets.

Somebody will come to him at some point who has the gift of prophecy and just take the Word of God and apply it to him, and he'll see it and rest in the truth. And he'll trust, he will trust the Spirit of God to manifest the life, the new life that he has in Christ, and that new life doesn't have a problem with cussing.

See that? So, I think if you look around with people that you know, you run into that a lot, where people say, well, yeah, I've You've taught me this truth or I've studied this truth, but I'm really frustrated because I can't apply it, you know. There are others that will give you chapter and verse about growth truths and they don't care about applying. All they care about is the fact that they got the knowledge. and they can sound like they're really highly spiritual, when in fact they're not, because you can see it hasn't been applied in how they live and function.

So, Rite Out points out a couple of verses, 1 Corinthians 12, 8 and 9, for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, and to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another the gifts of healing, etc. In Isaiah 11-2, the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him in the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. I like that Isaiah verse because the words that he uses, wisdom and understanding, and the spirit of counsel and strength.

You know, we've all known certain people in our life, like Amal Stanford was one of these guys. I think Cal Malloy was one of these guys. Or you could go to them and just say, well, you know, here's my situation. And I'm really serious about entering into this part of my spiritual growth, or I'm really trying to stop doing this.

And they will talk, in just a few minutes, it gets really clear. And it's gracious. And so those people are around, but there aren't very many of them. And the other interesting thing is that they don't have a very large audience, because people won't listen to them. Because it either sounds too easy, or they really don't want to. enter into that. I don't want to give up cussing if I were able to tell the truth, you know. I don't want to give up getting really angry if that is the issue. I don't want to give up lusting. I don't really, really want to do that. And so the Spirit of God gets us, I think, in a position where both to will and to do, we want to do it. And then when that willing comes along, Then we find out, out of our own strength, no matter how much we will, it doesn't get done.

So let me ask you, how does it get done? What happens to a believer who wants to be free from a specific issue that they know that's of the flesh? And they can almost point to you in chapter 7 of Romans where they are spiritually. I'm right here. The more I try, the worse it gets. How do you get over that hurdle?

Mike, something we've been talking about here recently is the issue of forgiveness. One that I've often seen as something to put on the sin list, and yet it is. Inability to forgive, but something that I recognize is an incredibly hard, hard thing to do if you've been wronged. Everything in us doesn't want to forgive. And so that particular issue, for me, really resonates on this topic. Like, if we're going to ask this question, how is it to... how is this going to happen? How am I going to forgive?

Because I absolutely recognize that there's no... there isn't even a desire in me, in a sense, to do that. Except that I know that God... that's God's character. That's His part. You know, so I know what's right, but the, you know, and in a sense the desire in me to have that is there, but in a sense, you know, there's no, there's no, it's just absolutely not in me, you know.

But I, you mentioned the words both to will and to do, and I had written down that verse this morning from Philippians 2, 12 and 13. Yeah. And, of course, we get to that in these last questions in this lesson about obedience. That's why I had written it down. But, you know, we see there in verse 13 that it's God who is at work, both to will and to do. It has to be Him at work.

And I think that's been one of the things I've been learning, and just kind of recently been learning, partly through Andrew Murray's Waiting on God. recognizing that why would it take me so long to learn to forgive somebody? Because it has to be this process wherein I recognize that it's absolutely not in my own strength. It's absolutely not in my ability. But it is in his. And I kind of at this point now where I realize, okay, I'm getting close to understanding it. But it's not like I can, you know, pick up the ball and run the last 10 yards with it and make the touchdown.

No, it's got to be him all the way through the end. It has to be him who does this work. So even though I'm beginning to recognize that, you know, What it is, it's an incredibly long, at least in this instance, and I think it often is. It often is a long-term process where he's teaching them to depend. That's what Murray, you know, talks about depending. Yeah. Utter dependence.

You know, that brings up another point. I was, oh, a couple of years ago, I think. I don't know why this incident, but there was a woman who was a friend of my daughter's. was over at our house and we got to talking about she's involved in an alcoholic family. And she made a comment, you know, she said, I think I would be really better if I could just forgive myself. And I thought about that for a minute. I said to her, I said, well, why do you worry about forgiving yourself?

The Lord Jesus paid for your sins. They're done. They're gone. And if he forgave you, why do you have a problem forgiving yourself? Because we have to answer to him. We don't have to answer to ourself. And I'm not sure she understood what I said. But I think a lot of times in Christianity with Christians that you find out that the real issue is that in their own mind they think they're a rat and they can't They think, well, I've got to forgive myself if I'm going to move on.

No, you don't. If Christ forgave you, and God forgave you, and not only forgave you, but just wiped out the sin, why are you dancing with it? And it's a tool, I think, that Satan uses to keep you out of walking in the spirit. Because as long as he can keep you self-focused, you're not moving on. And I don't care what it is. It's self-forgiveness. It's, oh, I got to stop cussing or I got to stop. What are you doing? You're spending all your time thinking about yourself, not the Lord Jesus and not what he did. You know, every time you take the Lord's table, the big thing about the Lord's table is remember me. Don't remember you, remember me. Your sins are gone because of what I did. And so I find it with, especially in this age of psychobabble that we live in, you know, the psychology, every time you see a tragedy, we've got to get the counselors in there. You know what psychological counselors are?

They study the sin nature. And if we know anything, we know the sin nature isn't fixable. You cannot fix it. You know, you can drug it down, you can do all kinds of stuff, but you can't fix it. And so counseling is one of, somebody says to me, well, I'm going to go, I'm going to go to college and I'm going to major in psychiatry. Well, that's a waste of time. I guess what's running through my mind is that, you know, when you're talking about this prophecy, you have to have That's probably not the right way to say that, but an understanding of the way of Scripture, so that you're rightly dividing the Word of Truth, so that there's an understanding. You know, if you understand what happened to you at the cross, you know, without that knowledge, how do you ever get away from guilt or self-incrimination?

You don't. You don't. Because you can't. You don't have the equipment. You don't have the knowledge for the spirit to work that freedom into you. And if you are a believer and you know your sins are forgiven, but you're in a reformed environment in terms of doctrine, it's designed to keep you self-centered, thinking about your sins and the obedience of rules, which the only thing that the law does is focus you on you. That's all it does. Which makes me think in this day that we live in, there are not very many prophets or people that prophesy. I agree. There aren't very many. There aren't very many who have been down the road.

You know, I quote Miles Stanford all the time because he was such a sage about certain things. He said to me once and every once in a while he'd say things that I never forgot from that day. I called him up and I was frustrated because I wasn't moving along fast enough spiritually in my own mind. I think we all think that. His answer to me was, he said, it takes a long time for God to teach you the truth. No problem.

And then it takes him twice as long to teach you how and when to give it to somebody else. But then he said, but when you're ready, the woods will be full of them. So what God does is he trains a prophet. He teaches them the truth, and then he teaches them how and when to give it to somebody else. And then he's ready to be a prophet.

You don't wake up one morning being a prophet. You have to have time with the Lord to be able to even say helpful things to other people. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't people that have spiritual gifts of exhortation and that kind of thing, but prophecy is a whole different thing. I think a pastor should be, at least to some extent, a prophet. You ought to be able to say to people that come to him for guidance. Show them the way and be patient with them, you know. Hey, Mike, I just kind of like my mind on the first Corinthians 14, which is you may all prophesy one by one.

Do you think that Paul had kind of a prayer, a desire for that all believers would be able to to minister in that way to one another because they would all be equipped, you know, in time. It's a, like we're talking about here, it's a, it takes growth and development, but that, because I agree with you, there are a few, there are a few who prophesy in the sense that we're talking about it. But should it be that more and more are are able to minister in that way as they grow in grace and knowledge.

Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you quoted from where, 1 Corinthians? Yeah, it's the quote, it's on 2.24, 1 Corinthians 14, you may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and be comforted. I would have a sense there that maybe that is prophecy of information, new information, because the whole word hadn't been written, put together then. Do you understand what I'm saying?

And I would think that some may have information that others didn't have. because it took until 90-something A.D. before the Bible was really put together. Now, Paul said that if anybody teach any other doctrine than what I teach, let him be accursed. Well, I can envision the Corinthian church, they don't have a new Schofield reference Bible, and they probably have not had reading the letter to the Romans or Ephesians, you know, at that point. So, there's probably in the prophecy there, there is new information.

But it's interesting how Paul makes it orderly and says, one at a time, one at a time. So, I'm not sure I can answer that. Miles, I do think that, you know, there's discussion, Paul talks about it, about people who are prophets in the early church. And Paul was a prophet, obviously.

I was just thinking about Luke 24, 32, on the road, I think it was on the road to Emmaus, and they said, one to another, did not our heart burn within us? while he talked to us, by the way, and while he opened to us the scripture. What scriptures was he opening up? Old Testament? Talking about the Messiah. But here again, that's not prophesying, right? Because it's out of the Bible.

Oh, that's really good, Donna. What do you think about that, Miles? Yeah, I think I heard most of that. Yeah, I agree. I've been thinking about the way, even in the Old Testament, the idea of prophet is communicated. And I know in the discussion last week, we tend to think of the prophet only as the one who brings new information. And yet they had schools of prophets in the Old Testament times. And that kind of clashes with their idea that a prophet simply receives new information from God and is the mouthpiece of that information because they were teaching men to be prophets. And so it implies that there's something of knowing the scripture and being skilled in applying it and And that's not a coldly intellectual thing as we are here, but it's a ministry of the Holy Spirit through someone.

I don't know if that connects quite, but I guess that's kind of where I'm beginning to learn that there's a use of that. How about this idea? I read a brief history of John Darby. And John Darby, you know, was early on, as he was learning these things, he was searching for other people who had somewhat of an understanding. And he found a group in a city in, I think, Ireland or England, and he would travel every Saturday to meet with this group of people every Sunday.

And that was actually the seedbed of starting the Brethren Church. And they would sit around all day with their Bibles and they would go through things and just talk. But what are they doing? I think what they're doing is they're prophesying. You know, John Darby would say, well, here's what the Lord showed me this week. And another guy would say, oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. And they would add whatever. And then somebody over here would say, well, how about this issue? And it would go around like that, you know.

We find ourselves today in discussions like that with people that, you know, It's like one of those hungry hearts says, well, when you get together with Christians, you have a tendency to talk about the trials of the way. And the writer of that, it might have been Stoney, said, how often do you just sit with another believer and talk about the wonders of the Lord Jesus Christ? That's prophecy. The wonders of the Lord. What did the Christ show you? What did the Spirit show you? this week about the wonders of the Lord Jesus.

And it's so cool when you can be in an environment like that. It doesn't happen very often, but it edifies everybody who's in that conversation. And I'm always hoping that the Bible studies that I'm involved in, they end up doing that, but rarely do they, you know, where some of us say, well, yeah, you know, and it gets into rather than academic or whatever, that it starts out to be something and ends up being something where we are talking about, oh, the Lord showed me something this week, here's what he showed me. And this person over here goes, oh, that's cool. Oh, that is really neat.

It applies to them. That's, I think, how contemporary prophecy works. We got time to do maybe question three and four. Question three is, with this definition, do we need prophets today? Answer, definitely yes. Absolutely we do. And we don't recognize them as we should, I think.

So now Miles brought this up, a question for how do we become obedient to the word? And as soon as I saw, you know, I wrote that question probably a month and a half ago. How do we become obedient to the world? Rideout's answer is this is affected by allowing the spirit to apply it. But what I wanted, you know the thing I sent out that Andrew Malloy sent me out of H.A. Ironside, the difference between, our Lord Himself makes a distinction between keeping His commandments and keeping His word. I think that's what this means, keeping his word, and I think that's what write-out means. It isn't keeping his commandments, it's keeping his word.

And if you remember how that went, that the little girl's mother asked her to do something and she complied because the mother asked, or actually told her, I want you to do, and then you can go play after school. Fast forward now and the mother's in a situation where she has guests coming and she hasn't got time to clean the house and clean the kitchen and do the dishes and prepare the meal. And that little girl overhears her talking to the neighbor about the fact that she just doesn't have time. And she goes to the mom and says, well, mom, I'll help you.

I can do the dusting, I can do this and I can do that. That's obedience to the word. See, I'm aware of there's a need and I'm in to help. That's much different than someone saying, I'd like you to do, you know, or, you know, you hear about somebody needs some help and you go and help them. you're complying. And I think that's what Rideout, when he says, how do you become obedient to word? He says, there's nothing more deadening than to be engaged with truth without its acting upon the conscience. What I find interesting in contemporary Christianity is that there are groups of people that when the law is laid on them, it really attacks their conscience and they pick up the ball and they're going to obey. Right? And they're worker bees. Problem is, is that as we're learning in Romans chapter one, They can't pull it off. They can't pull it off. You know, I can always criticize you, but I got to look at myself.

How does a person live under grace, obeying God's words? How does he do that? It isn't that, tell me what to do and I'll do it. You know, Don and I, years and years ago, were in a Bible study with a guy who turned out to be pretty phony, but he was asked in the Bible study, you know, how do you make your marriage work? You know what his answer was? She tells me what to do and I do it. Well, how does Christianity work?

Well, the Lord tells me what to do and I do it. No. The Lord shows me the grace that I live under, and He's indwelt me by the Holy Spirit and given me the life that desires to do it. And like Philippians, to boast of will and to do, our new resurrected life wants to be pleasing to God. Would you say it almost requires a relationship? It totally requires a relationship, not only with God's Word, but with the person of Christ. Because you don't, you know, it's like these people that work really hard all their life to make a lot of money. You know the problem with those pictures of presidents?

They're not warm and fuzzy. They don't talk back to you. They don't tell you. You can't hug them. But you also know that that's what they love. That's what they love. So, if I have a relationship with a person that I really love, it's the person that's got me. It isn't what they tell me to do. I can't wait to be as pleasing as I can most of the time.

So I think you're right, Donna, I think it presupposes a degree of intimacy with the Lord Jesus in order to, as the question says, become obedient to his word. You know? And so when he... Can the Lord Jesus just suggest something in his word to us and we would say, oh yeah, that's cool, I'm in. Yeah, absolutely. Whatever's pleasing. I just noticed we're over time. So we got into it a ways. So we're getting close to the end. Probably another couple lessons and that will be done. So I want all of you to be thinking about what you'd like to do next. Preferably a book of the Bible. I've got some ideas, but I'd like to get your ideas before I suggest mine, so let's close.

Our dear Father, how we love you today. How we are so thankful that your spirit is about the business of revealing through your word the person of the Lord Jesus that we could Just walk with Him and serve Him and serve the body of Christ, our beloved brother in Him, recognizing that You died for every one of us, even the ones that we know that are not believers. You died for them, too. So we thank You, Father, and how we pray in Your Son's name. Amen. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Mike. That was really good. Yeah it was. I feel like that conversation could go on quite a bit longer if we had time. Recording stopped. He said the conversation could go on longer. Yeah.