The Spirit is Received by Faith - part 2

Today we're going to continue on in these last three verses. Can I get someone to read these five verses for me again? You can read them from the overhead or from your Bible if you like. You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing that I find out from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you do it by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Thanks, Roy. OK, well today we're going to get into the section in these three verses that talk about the Holy Spirit. And so as we go through, we'll see this is the first introduction of Galatians to talking about the Holy Spirit. But let's look at the first phrase here.

Are you so foolish? Remember from last week, the idea of foolish here is not applying your mind. In today's vocabulary, it would be what Actually, I noticed people, I was kind of thinking, people don't say, you're foolish these days. That's probably not politically correct.

But they'll say, what were you thinking? Which is, I think, the equivalent to that idea. What were you thinking? So if you were politically correct in this day, according to our time, you would say, what were you thinking, Galatians? So one of the questions here is, is Paul Is Paul saying, you are so foolish, much more foolish than other Galatians, or than your neighbor? So is that really the idea here? Is he saying, boy, you're exceedingly foolish. Your quantity of foolishness is exceeded. It's beyond others. Is that what he's saying? Now, you can't look ahead. You look ahead, and you'll get what my opinion is about that.

Just reading it, what would you think if you just read that? Is that talking about the quantity of foolishness or something else? How does it just read if you just read it the first time? Would you say it says the same thing as the previous? Up in the other one it says, O foolish Galatians, back in verse 1, this says, Are you so foolish? I'm getting some I'll answer it for you since I don't see a lot of it. I'm not sure. It's kind of hard. It probably seems to think, well, okay, they're pretty foolish. Pretty foolish in the average Galatian. I don't know what that means.

I think actually what's interesting is, and this is where it's so wonderful if you start looking, if you take the time, if you have the means to look at all the, what's nice is there are plenty of tools out there that parse the Greek language, and you can find the subject and the verb and the modifiers and things like that. But there's some choices in there. So in this passage, in this sentence, U is the subject, R is the verb. It's interesting, this is a question, so the R comes first.

I'm not sure I really totally understand that, but anyway. R is the verb, and so modifies the verb, R. And some would say it modifies foolish. And it seems like the ones that say it modifies foolish are the ones that gave you that translation right there. Because if so modifies a verb, a translation might be this way.

You are being foolish in this way. And that would lead to the rest of that verse, right? And I think that's a much superior way of looking at it. You are being foolish having begun by the Spirit, and so on. I mean, the other way emphasizes they're just big-time foolish. This way emphasizes, well, the rest of the verse is going to tell you the manner in which they're being foolish.

So I think that was really helpful, and I took the time to go through that and look at that. So hopefully that makes sense. I'm not trying to get into an English lesson here. since I didn't do that well in English to start with in school. Bonnie could attest to that. She always helps me out here. And indeed, just for clarification, so can modify foolish. It could modify foolish, and it could modify are. So there's some choices to be made there, if you will. Doug? Roger, are you so foolish? They're following a bunch of balloons. Well, in that translation there, I think it does too. I think it really fits with the context.

You're just a bunch of fools. Right, and that's not very instructive. If I tell you, first of all, you're about ready to punch me in the face, right? You're going to get angry at me. If I tell you, you know, you're not using your mind, you're not thinking very well, and here's why you're not thinking very well, that's communicating something. If I insult you, that's not going to go too far.

Go ahead. Again, I think since they're Jewish people, and if you go through the Psalms and you go through the Proverbs, you'll see that there's the constant comparison between the wise and the foolish. So I think when Paul is saying this, and he calls them foolish, it's probably in their mindset, it means you are no longer wise, but you're foolish. So I think that's what you know, to me that would be the message that he's trying to portray to, you know, past Jewish people.

Okay. Well, so the meaning of the word not applying your mind certainly is more specific than just saying, in our day, foolish is not, you know, you wouldn't get very far if you called a person foolish to start with. You would probably not have a long conversation. Probably a very short conversation. So, it would be better to say, here's a manner in which you're not using your mind. What were you thinking? In our vernacular, what were you thinking, Galatians? Having begun by the spirit, you're now being perfected by the flesh?

Does that really make sense? I think you might be able to have a dialogue. So that's the reason for this chart. I found it really interesting. And taking the time to go through and look at the... What's wonderful is there's many helps to ascertain what the subject and the verb and the modifiers are. So it's really great. Right. You know where the word is.

For foolish, is it raka? Foolish, actually, I'll tell you from last week. Foolish is... Because that goes back to what? Foolish is... Call your brother a fool? A-N-O-T, transliterated, it's not the one, it signifies not understanding. It has, it's actually two parts. A is negative. It's A knowledge or A mind. It's the negative of mind. You're not using your mind. That's what the word foolish means. Okay, so that's the first part of verse three.

So let's go on. Having begun by the Spirit. And it could be in or by, having begun in the Spirit or by the Spirit. And the word having begun is, I'm not going to pronounce it, but the idea is to begin in or to make a beginning. And so the question comes up, and actually the tense, which is kind of important here, the tense of this verb here kind of, it's actually the Aorist tense. So that says that they did begin by the Spirit.

Paul's saying, you began by the Spirit. You being by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, that's how you began. So he's asking this, he's saying, having begun by the Spirit, he's going to go on and ask the rest of the question, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

So the question comes up, how have we, believers now, or the Galatians, begun in the Spirit? So I have some verses I have on there, but any thoughts before we start? How does the Christian life begin in terms of the Holy Spirit? What is the Holy Spirit's ministry to unbelievers?

Say again? Conviction. Okay, we're going to look at a verse that talks about that. Okay, good. So actually I have several verses here. The first one is, And let's just turn to that for a second in John 16. So it says, starting in verse 8, and I have it up there as well.

And this is speaking about the Holy Spirit. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in Me. So the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and it talks about the word convict, which always to me sounds like it's a court case or something like that, but actually the root word is the idea of convincing, which I think is much superior to understand what's going on. He's convincing the world, every unbeliever out there, that they're sinners and they need a savior, basically. So that's how Every person, including the Galatians, began with the Spirit.

The Spirit of God convinced them that they were sinners. And then secondly, the next aspect of that is that, and this doesn't talk about the Spirit directly, but it talks about the fact that you must be born again. I say to you, unless you are born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. And if you look at this, there's actually other verses that speak of the fact that we are a new creation in Christ.

In 2 Corinthians 5.17 we're a new creation. So the new birth is essential to every believer. So you start by being convinced and you're born again.

And the timing of all this, Scripture doesn't really give you a timeline other than to say these all happen simultaneously. It's not like, OK, day one, day two, and they give you a time list. To my knowledge, that doesn't exist in Scripture. All you have is this wonderful set of truths about who you are in Christ after you believe.

It helps me to think of the work of the Holy Spirit in sort of a, if you did it in a capsule form. He has identified us with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. into his family being identified with him and alive. Then the second part is in this very chapter you just read in verse 13 of chapter 16, when he the spirit of truth has come he will guide you into all truth.

He actually says here, He'll take of mine and give them unto you. Isn't that wonderful? I love that verse. And to me that's our sanctification in our walk. That He's showing us Christ. So, here's our position is by the Spirit and our condition is by the Spirit. Yeah, that's great.

As you see, we're going to go through here and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life is just, that's actually a whole study. I think Mike Doyle did one in the last couple of years about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That's a whole study unto itself. We're going to actually see, we're going to touch on a lot of those points today. That's great, Roy. Thank you.

What I always like to think about is that we've been baptized into Christ Jesus, and not speaking of water baptism, but we've been placed in a living union with the Lord Jesus Christ, never to be taken out. We've been identified, this is where identification, we've been identified into his death, burial, and resurrection. Another verse says basically that this speaks of the spirit. For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Greek, whether slave or free, we were all made to drink of one spirit.

So these are just a few of the things that happen along with a whole bunch of other things. Actually, the very last page has how Malloy's listing what he did back in 1996, I think it was, of the ministries of the Holy Spirit. He had 22 ministries. And what I noticed is, I looked for these verses here, but what he tried to do, I think, was to say, what are the ongoing ministries after salvation that the Holy Spirit has? And these are kind of like maybe the instant of salvation and those are the next instant of salvation. That's as if we can't separate them. But these address the very beginning of the Lord's work in our lives and we come to belief and then what Hal has listed in the back are the ongoing ministries of the Spirit.

Like I said, we could take that and that could be a whole class almost, taking all those 22 and going through each one of those. Gail? I was wondering, do you happen to have the Greek for that made to drink? Made to drink? Let's see. At the bottom. I do not. Every time I read that I'm curious what actually does that say and what tense and all is that. I need to drink. I can look it up. Yeah, I'm sorry. 22, was it one of the ones that had one here?

Number 22 is actually Galatians 3.3, but not one of those here. Okay, that's fine. I'm referring to our Galatians passage. No, that's good. Excellent. Referring back to the one we were just quoting, you're right. Thank you.

Okay, but as we're going to see is that the Galatians passage, the perfecting is an ongoing ministry. I think that's kind of where he's, so I think Hal kind of picked up on the fact that these are ongoing ministries that he listed in his list there. Okay, so basically this talks about the beginning of the Holy Spirit's works and so the contrast here is, and we're going to go on, are you now being perfected by the flesh? And once again, it could be by or in the place.

We're gonna have to give that door a fix. I don't know. I think... It's hard to sneak in quietly. It is hard to sneak in. Nancy is hard to sneak in quietly. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, perfected is this idea to finish, to complete, To bring someone to an end, to bring it to a goal, to end up at the goal. I don't know why I'm stumbling with that. OK. So. It's a process. It's a process. Thank you. Thank you. OK.

So literally, and what's interesting here is, here's a place where a tense really helps you here. The tense of the verb here, perfected, being perfected actually is the verb, is actually in present indicative middle. So if you take that middle, which is really important, it's for your benefit, it says, and this is really so cool here, literally, he's telling you unthinking Galatians, what were you thinking? You began by the Spirit, that's a fact, and now you're trying to perfect yourselves for your own benefit by the flesh. That doesn't make any sense. You start out with the Spirit and then, okay, now it's my turn. After the Spirit works in you for salvation, now I'm going to take over the reins. So with the middle voice in there, it really helps you to kind of focus on the fact they were trying to perfect themselves.

That's the way we think. What's that? That's the way we think. Right. And has that changed today? I think, unfortunately, so many bodies of dear believers, I mean, they're trying really hard. I mean, they really are. And they're very sincere. And it's very difficult. And if you might talk to them about that, they might get offended. And they say, well, I have to work for the Lord. It's just what you have to do. No, that's not the picture that scripture has, if you're careful. The problem comes when there are denominations and groups that teach that this is the way.

They ignore Galatians. They still teach this same principle explicitly every Sunday, if not during the week. You better be at the weekly services, by the way. And it's one of those things where they, I have a friend who's out west who's dealing with this where his brother's leaving the church because he thinks the church is teaching this very thing that they shouldn't, I'm sorry, the church has been teaching what Paul says.

They don't do it by the flesh. And he disagrees. And so he's leaving the church because they've got to be Gotta be doing it. So he wants it to be done by the flesh. He wants it to be done by the flesh. And that's exactly, I mean, the Judaizers, they wanted people to get, you know, you gotta have a little law to really make you holy. You gotta have a little law on this.

You just can't. You're unruly otherwise. Boy, that's just not the picture. If you carefully look at what God has said, that's just not the picture. Well, I mean, if we're the bride of Christ, as a husband and wife situation in my own marriage, I don't sit around looking at a checklist of things, what can I do, that if I do these things I know my wife will be happy with me. I think, how can I lovingly take care of my wife, and she responds and does things in the same way to us, and it's not by law. And we're the bride of Christ, it's a similar, it's an important picture to understand, but they don't grasp it.

Right. No, I agree. That's great. Okay, so I have a, this probably is kind of a silly question, but is this position or condition? You all should get an A on this one, come on. Well, wouldn't you say, you know, what's kind of cool is in scripture, everyone notice this, that many truths have three aspects.

So there is a, I have been perfected, I'm being perfected, I will be perfected. There is a positional aspect of this, but it's not in this verse. This verse is not talking about our condition. But there is positional, and we have been positionally perfected. But Paul's talking here about conditional perfecting, our Christian life.

OK. All right. So then, another kind of global... Boy, there's all kinds of global questions here today. Just so important questions. So what is... What is God's goal in a believer's life? If you were to go to a Christian man on the street, what would you get? I don't know.

I might be kind of scary, actually. But I think here, I thank the Lord. I think here in Holly Hills, we would probably get a very good answer. So once again, I have a couple of verses here. So any just summary thoughts? What's his goal? Right, okay, that's certainly part of it.

Well, the two that occur to me, actually after a little study, are Romans 8.28 and 29 and 2 Corinthians 3.18. Actually, Vern just covered this one recently, and this is one of Randy's all-time favorite verses, but it has all to do about the image of his son. There's actually two parts to that. Romans 8, 28 and 29 talk about that we're to be conformed.

It talks about the end goal. We're to be conformed. He's predestinous, right? It's God's plan. He's predestinous to be conformed to the image of his son. So that's the end goal. And then 3.18 says, here's how I'm going to do it. You are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory. So it's about being like our Savior, being like Christ. That's the goal.

There's no other goal he has. Not like, well, I want to make you a good person, make you really friendly, have a warm handshake. No, it's not be whatever. Whatever you can think the world might think is good. No, it's to be the image of Christ, to be conformed ultimately and then to transform moment by moment. Okay, another silly question. What is the flesh to do with reaching God's goal? Zero. A big zero, right? It's not going to help you.

Even though, and that's what's so frustrating, even though people would argue with you, you probably would be run out of churches on a rail. People would argue with you and argue and argue. But I think scripture is clear. What's cool is, like in the 318 Pass, it's in the passive voice.

You're not transforming yourself. I'm going to transform myself today. What's on the agenda? I'm going to transform myself today. No, you're not. You're not going to do that. In fact, actually, the more you try to do that, probably the less you will.

OK. All right. Let's go on here. OK. Now, we're kind of tucked in the middle of this. We talk about suffering. So actually, let me just, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let me just see here. OK. So it says basically, did you suffer so many things in vain if indeed it was in vain? So one of the questions is, I want to stop here for a second.

Why do you think in the middle of this passage, sort of like it's on the side, all of a sudden he just brings in suffering. And you're thinking, why does he have suffering in him? He talked about how they were not thinking right, their minds weren't thinking right. Then all of a sudden he talks about suffering. So why does he... I'm not sure I have an answer. I have some answers. Any thoughts on that?

Why do you think suffering is kind of... Randy? And along with that, I would say that sufferer indicates to me that the person is not reacting in a normal way, I mean they are being persecuted, like Randy is saying, and they aren't reacting in the flesh like most people would do, because otherwise it wouldn't be suffering. I mean it would still be suffering to the same degree of suffering. I mean when somebody persecutes you, that word itself, persecute, means to cause somebody else pain, and the other person isn't necessarily causing you pain back to gain the victory. Does that make sense? It has a sense of not reacting.

Right. Right. I think we're going to see that here. Well, you know, something that occurred to me, it's actually what's interesting here, and this is something that I was looking at Hal's notes and he said there are two things in his notes. It's wonderful. I feel like I'm sitting with Hal every time I do it. I apologize. I've said this a hundred times, but I apologize for that. But it's just so cool.

He said the two most misunderstood things in a Bible church are law and suffering. Those two things are most misunderstood. And we're kind of seeing law is, that's a hard thing. And suffering is a second thing. But suffering really is part of God's plan. It's part of his grace. Which is like, wait a minute. That doesn't sound like grace to me. That sounds like pain. That sounds like what? But that's part of his grace. So I think that's part of it.

And I think another thing that just occurred to me as you're talking, Randy, is that Paul's bringing the message that you're that the flesh isn't the solution, the law of works system isn't the solution, well, if you embrace that, you're going to be persecuted by your own Jewish brethren. They're going to say, no, no, no, you've got to add some law to this. So you're going to be persecuted. If you go along with what Paul's message was, you'll be fighting against all the Jewish believers that were contradicting what Paul said. So anyway, suffer comes from the word to be affected by something from without, or it actually can be internal, or to experience suffering, that's more within.

There's a really excellent passage, so I'd like to just go over, it doesn't have to be quick here. So let's look at Acts 13, verses 44 through 50. So I think I'll just kind of walk you through this passage. It's a neat passage. Now, what's kind of hard, it's hard to find, and actually I looked at a couple here, it's hard to find an exact reference. You think, well, he's talking about the Galatians. It's hard to find an exact place where it talks about the Galatians suffering.

But this is going to talk about when Paul and Barnabas told people the truth of God's word, they didn't lie. So it's not exactly a match, but it does talk about we're going to see jealousy contradicting the contradicting Paul Barnum's message of blaspheming, repudiation, which is actually the idea to thrust away, to push away, I don't want that, and persecution. So let's just look, I'll just kind of point out the words here.

In Acts 13, starting in verse 44, it says, The next Sabbath nearly the whole city assembled to hear the word of the Lord. What happened was that prior to that, Paul and Barnabas' modus operandi was, we'll go first to the Jews, And we'll tell them the good news.

We'll go right to the synagogue. We'll stand up and they'll say, do you have anything to say? And they'll say, yes, I do. And they do that over and over. They'll tell them the message of salvation, basically. How Israel came through this. And most times they say, well, thank you, Paul. Sometimes they won't believe. But a lot of times they said, OK.

Well, this was the next Sabbath. The word got around. The next Sabbath day, everybody showed up. Well, are the Jews going to be happy about this? No, no, no. So here's what happens. When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy. That was the first aspect of suffering. And began contradicting the things spoken by Paul. So if Paul said, we live by grace, they said, no, we live by law.

I'm just paraphrasing. I'm just trying to think what they'd be saying. And they were blaspheming. I'm not exactly sure. What's that mean? I looked, I tried to find another. Another translation has, against things that were being spoken by Paul, saying slanderous and evil things, is another translation of blasphemy. So it doesn't, you know, blasphemy is being against God, but another translation says slanderous and evil things.

And then it says, Paul and Barmah spoke out boldly and said, it was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, Since you repudiated it, or thrust it away, you pushed it away, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. And let me just, in the interest of time, skip down to verse 50. But the Jews incited the devout women of prominence, and the leading men of the city, and instigated a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of the district.

So this is an example of suffering for Christ, on behalf of Christ. They present his message, and here's the suffering they encountered. And basically it's in vain, it's without cause. There is no cause for that, they were speaking what was right. So they suffered in vain, without cause or groundlessly. So as we know, believers will suffer.

So once again, let's look at a couple of these. Actually, I want to look at the first one. This is interesting. It's in Galatians. The first one of these, I actually had not come across before. It's one of these things where you think, boy, where did that verse come from? Either I read it, they didn't register it. I don't remember that verse. And it's a cool verse. I can't wait till we get to it, actually. It's Galatians. And may I get Randy to read it for me here? Galatians. Yeah, 429, and let's see here. Yeah, okay, give me 429, Randy.

But as at that time, he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, so it is now also. So it's kind of a sneaker verse there. Before that, it's talking about the bond woman and the free woman. So there's kind of a contrast between we who are free in Christ and we who are bonded by the law. So it's kind of a summary verse there, but it kind of says that he who is born according to the flesh persecutes those who are born according to the spirit.

And then a little phrase, so it is now also. So things haven't changed. in Paul's time and our time. So there's a persecution that those who are under the law, they're going to persecute those who are free. And it's unchanged today. Now some of the other verses are a little more familiar.

In Philippians 1.29 it says, So also to suffer for his sake, We're going to suffer for Christ's sake or on his behalf. It's that little word huper, which is the idea of suffering for or on behalf of. And let's look lastly at 1 Peter. Let's turn to that 1 Peter 4. And let's start in verse 15 and 16. 1 Peter 4. And can I get someone to read that 1 Peter 4, 15 and 16. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed. So if we go back a little bit to 15, it says, by no means let any of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a troublesome meddler.

So that's suffering for something you actually did wrong, right? If you meddle in somebody's affair and you get or you're a murderer, you suffer. You suffer the world's consequences for that. So that's suffering that you inflicted, or the self inflicted.

The one that Gail read here was, but if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed. But in that name, let him glorify God. In the name of a Christian, let him glorify God. So there's two aspects to suffering. Suffering that we do for Christ, And suffering that we have just because we still have a fleshly nature, we may act according to that. Yes? I think it can be real vulnerable. Especially if your family, even as Christians, are people who are trying to work their way to heaven. Try to farm themselves, or be good enough for God and His believers. Right, exactly. And then they don't. And to be rejected, so to speak. By your own family? Maybe to be invited to things, but to be on the outskirts because people don't really want to talk to you. Or get into it with you.

That's good. And there's also the suffering that comes just because we're part of this world. Right. Like Jesus and the blind man, he said, whose sin was this? It wasn't anybody's sin. It was the fact that he just happened to be blind. It's a fallen world. Yeah, exactly.

And too many times I think people when they really get into the mindset that I think you can be extremely cruel in pointing this out to some people because, you know, even if they're unsafe and they're going through suffering, we honestly don't know whether that's being directed by God or whether it's His will. And for us to go out there and condemn those people because they're sinners and they're suffering because of it is no different than the Pharisees telling people that they were sinners and they're suffering. That's a good point.

OK, so my last little thing is that there therefore are suffering and the Galatians suffering if they believe Paul's message is not in vain. This 416 passage opens the door a little bit to two kinds of suffering. As I was going through Hal's notes I found a couple of charts and I just couldn't resist. He's in a contrast of suffering because of Christ and they're suffering because of self. And it's good to have that balance. I noticed in his notes, he presented the first one, you know, X Sundays before and then several Sundays later.

So how, you know, like we all, we all, you know, so Hal doesn't walk on water. He never said, I know he never said that, but it's just kind of good. I thought he presented one part of the message and it wasn't too late. People said, wait, Hal, how about just like, how about people suffering just because the world, what about that? And he, so he, He added another chart to his message, and I thought that was kind of cool. So anyway, he starts us out with this kind of, how to avoid suffering. This is kind of an eye-catching thing. Five steps to avoid suffering because of Christ. So here's his five steps. These are negative.

Actually, I have a homework assignment for you, too. And also, listen carefully in the second service. He doesn't give any verses here, but there's verses for every single one of these. So if you want to do some homework, you can find the verses that go along with this.

And you're going to have some help, because Vern's going to cover, I believe. Hope he doesn't stand me up here. Vern's going to cover the answer to one of these. So just keep your focus here. So this is kind of the flip of it. So if you don't want to have any suffering as a Christian, don't reckon or count yourself dead to sin and alive to God. Hopefully you can find that verse. That won't be too hard.

Don't appropriate your identification with Jesus Christ. Know moment by moment dying to self and self-interest so that Christ cannot be manifest in you. Don't walk by faith but by sight, seeing is believing. Don't abide in Christ so that you don't have the power to do all things. Don't behold the glory of Christ, so that you will not be transformed into his image. So you can find, Hal put the negatives in, but we can find all the positives. So Hal's kind of saying, you don't want to have suffering? Do this. Well, then the questions came. How do I say? And the questions came, and I gathered them up, and executed them, and then week two or three came by, and here's what happened.

But we will still suffer because of self, the self-life, and walking by sight. So we'll be acting like an unbeliever. As Stan was referring to that. We will reap what we sow. Universal principle. And we'll suffer. If we do bad, we'll get the results of doing bad. The Holy Spirit will be grieved if we're not walking with him. We will sense his grief and distress. The results will be suffering.

The Lord loves us. We are His sons and daughters. He chastens and corrects every son and daughter. If we despise, treat lightly His chastening and correction, the results will be suffering. So, I think that's really cool. He tried to balance, we can suffer for Christ. and we can suffer because of ourselves. They're both in view. And we probably do both. We're in both categories there. We suffer for Christ sometimes, and we suffer because we just, you know, we let the flesh have control. So, I thought that was just really neat.

Roger, I think you could also add a fourth one and say that suffering can either drive you away from God or closer to God. And that would be the world suffering. That may not have anything to do But what I was talking about earlier that some people are destined for whatever reason to go through a lot of suffering. What about the people that got hit by the tornado? And they were in the path of the tornado. Was it because of anything that they did or any sin in their life or anything like that? They just literally got destroyed.

So that suffering, is that actually going to bring them closer to God or is it actually going to drive them away from God? And I think this world has a lot of that. opinion. I see it too much in my life. But I think we're going to see at the very end here about how God's love and desire for everyone never stops. He doesn't, you know, draw them closer. And the Holy Spirit, what comforts me is that the Holy Spirit's ministry. I have an unbelieving sister and husband.

We went down to see him here a couple weeks ago. And it just seems like every time we go there, there's some additional thing that prevents us from talking with them. They got a dog. So now the dogs, besides having the TV on 24-7, They kind of huddled in this room, in their living room.

I don't know how they did it. It really hurts me. They had this dog that's just jumping all over the place, making noise, and can't be still. There's no possibility to get any... The TV's going. They did turn the sound off this time. That was nice. But the dog was yapping so much. So it's just impossible. We did go out to dinner, which is good. That was a little bit quieter.

But it's just like, Lord, there's never... And my sister said, well Roger, I didn't know you were so... Sensitive to dogs. The dog has to lick your face. And I said, I don't know. I don't. I. Dogs are OK. I guess I'm not a super animal person, but they're OK. But I don't want them that close. It can be close. I don't mind. You can lick my toes or I don't know, whatever. I'm getting way off the mark out there.

And on that same day, I thought to go on. extrapolate on that and say for example that they did listen to you and that they did accept the Lord and that they listened to the message and then inside they say well now that I've done this suffering is going to go away.

And it's not going to go away. In most cases it may even get worse. And so then they look at that and they say Roger told me this and so I accepted this and I did this And now my life is even worse than it was before. So is that going to drive you away from God? Or is it going to bring you closer to God?

I think a lot of this comes down to the call that the scriptures have that older believers such as the number of believers come in and we don't just say, sweet, we've got a new baby and drop him off in the spiritual nursery. Somebody else will take care of him. Because we need to give them a biblical context in teaching one another about those things. That way you don't come into...

As a babe in Christ, the Lord was quite gracious with me. Because He did not put me in a lot of situations where I was genuinely suffering. Because I would have no way to cope with it. As a young, charismatic person, I would have looked for God's cursing me for something. And I would have started thinking through my mind, what sin did I not commit? But he was gracious and didn't allow that. And now that I understand suffering, when suffering comes, I don't spend a lot of time thinking, oh, what's that dude, why is he not sweating? Instead, I look at the scripture saying, let us be both then.

Excellent, excellent. It's the eternal meaning. Right. No, I think that's great. That's good. Okay, let's see if we can all agree. Really good. Okay, so the last verse here is, So then does he who provides you with the spirit and works miracles among you do it by the works of the law or by the hearing with faith. So we're going to see this is very similar to verse two.

But just kind of get our feet in the ground here real quickly here, is that Provide is the idea of furnished supply to give, and it's working miracles among you. And actually, if you break that down, it's actually three words, Energeo, which is Vern's favorite word, the Energizer Bunny. I always like whenever I see Energeo, Energizer Bunny. So he energizes you with power in, And actually, after looking at it, in the work, working miracles in you, or better maybe, God's power working in you.

So let's just look here quickly. Here's a contrast between verses 2 and 5. They're very similar. And I just, I didn't have a way to bring it in one at a time, so this is a whole shebang here. But basically, if you just kind of compare rows here, in verse 2 it says, how did you receive the Holy Spirit? And then in verse 5 it says, how did God provide the Holy Spirit and work his power in you? So it's very similar.

And then he's going to say, well, was it by the works of the law or by the hearing with faith? And we know from looking at this, it's by the hearing with faith. It can't be the works of the law. So basically God is providing, you receive the Spirit by the hearing of faith and God provides the Holy Spirit and works his power in you by the hearing of faith.

Faith is there at the beginning, at salvation and all through your Christian life. Okay, and just because I couldn't stop, I didn't bring it up one at a time. It's actually probably pretty good. So one last, this is just a cool one I thought that just kind of contrasted how God functions and how God wants us to function. God functions by grace. He pours out His divine favor. It's undeserved, it's unmerited, it's unearned. He never stops the flow of His grace toward us. So how does God want us to react?

There's one and only one concept. If you don't get anything else in the Christian life, it's by faith. You don't have that. Well, it must be something else. No, it's only by faith. Now, it doesn't say that you may understand everything, but your response is to be by faith. And what is faith? It's trust, dependence, reliance. But faith must have an object. And we can place our faith in many things, right?

I have faith that this is going to hold me up. It's going to hold my books up and I won't fall down while I put my weight on it. There's only one object that pleases God. It's the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who Christ is. And that's what we place our trust and dependence and reliance. And as we study his word, we learn more of this wonderful glory of who he is and what he's done. And that's to help our faith to grow. We're to grow more and more to understand that he can be trusted and that we see who he is and what he's done.

So I thought this is just an excellent chart to just kind of principles of the Christian life since we're talking about being perfected in the Christian life. And then the last page that you have there is the 22 aspects of the Holy Spirit's ministry. When you have some time to read through those, it's just outstanding. And maybe we'll come back to these as we go through.

And actually, I have the... Randy, I have the... I have the... the word file for this electronically. So I can email it out to you guys. So you can use that because we're going to see the Holy Spirit quite a few more times from now on. The second half of Galatians is probably what we do instead of the law covering the first half. So we've got a lot of those to cover.

I was listening this morning to the end of Acts here. And the very last chapter of Acts 28 Verse 27, 26 actually, he's quoting from the Old Testament, in the middle of that he says, Go unto this people and say, Hearing they shall hear, not understand, seeing they shall see, and not perceive. For the heart of this people is become obtuse. and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and it should be converted and I should heal them. Be it known therefore unto you that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles and that they will hear it. And that fits with this verse, the hearing of faith, right?

Right, right. Now it's, you know, you think about God's chosen people, the nation of Israel, it's right there, it's right there before them. And they guarded the word so vehemently and they just, you know, It's so sad that they just didn't. So he turned to the Gentiles. But he hasn't forgotten it. He still has a plan, as we know. He still has a plan for his people. All right.

Let's close. We thank you, Father. We thank you for this day, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have on our Savior. Thank you for your Word. And thank you for our time this day. We pray for our brother Vern as he brings a message and for our fellowship time. Lord, thank you that we can rely upon you in all things. In Christ's name, Amen.