Person & Work of the Holy Spirit
Mike Doyle · Jan 6, 2013
Holy Spirit (2013), No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492634023252

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

Personal work of the Holy Spirit. I think the reason that we have been teaching over the last year in the class down here, the identification truths and grace. And we intended to do the personal work of the Holy Spirit within the confines of identification and grace, but Courtney talked too long so we didn't get it done.

And you'll know what I mean when it's his turn. But I think it's in order to really get into and absorb what this class is all about. It's really. essential that you have a little bit of an understanding of what the identification truths are. Now, I'm going to just go through them simple.

The Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins. Right? Anybody have a problem with that? If you do... And that took care of the issue of the penalty you incurred by sinning. But what did God do about the source of your sinning? Which the Word of God talks about as being the sin nature.

Starting, if you want to study it, read Romans, and when you get to Romans 5.12 it begins. And especially Romans chapter 6. Did God forgive the sin nature? Answer, no, he didn't.

Romans 8.3 says that what the law couldn't do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sin and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. So your sin nature and my sin nature was condemned. It wasn't forgiven. You, the person, were forgiven and your sins were paid for. So, how did he do it?

He did it by identifying you or including you or putting you in union with the Lord Jesus Christ at the point in which he died. Romans 6 says when we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into his death. We were united to him at the point in which he died. And that's really critical because when he died, What does death mean for those of you who have been in the class before? Separation.

So what God did is he took your sin nature and mine and all the sin natures of all believers and he united them to Christ. And you can tell at the point in which he did that by reading the Gospels. When Jesus says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's when it happened. Because now he is sin. Now, I'm united with Him, you're united with Him on that cross. When He dies, He separates from sin. Where are you? You separate too. You're buried with Him by baptism and you're resurrected with Him to newness of life. You no longer are united to the sin nature that dominated you before you became a believer.

Now, I don't know what the percentage is, but I would bet that it's well over 99% of Christians do not know those facts. They don't know them. Because if they knew them, they'd be free. So, to understand identification takes more than just me telling you what happened in two minutes. But you will see in Paul's epistles a reference to your identification, your crucifixion, co-crucifixion, co-burial, co-resurrection, co-seating in Christ in every one of Paul's epistles. They're there.

And Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I now live, I live by how? I live by the faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

So that's the first thing, I think, for you to enter into a greater understanding of what the Holy Spirit is up to and His personhood. You need to kind of understand that you were identified with the Lord Jesus in His death, burial, and resurrection. That's really important. The second thing you need to understand, hopefully, is grace.

What I don't mean by grace is where I could stand up here and give you 55 classes on what law isn't. If I convince you or show you what law isn't, it doesn't necessarily mean that I've taught you what grace is. Grace is not that I get what I don't deserve. That isn't what grace is. You guys have heard that definition before? And what's mercy? Well, mercy is I don't get what I do deserve. I can't tell you if you could spend the next hour coming up with a more shallow definition, you couldn't do it.

Grace, the definition that we like the best, is the one that Chester McCauley came up with, which is grace is the unlimited, unmerited blessings from God based on the totally adequate work of Christ. So when you cut that down, grace is unlimited. You could spend the rest of the afternoon contemplating the unlimitedness of grace. And you know what your mind will be telling you? Yeah, but I don't see it. Where's my Mercedes? Grace is unlimited. You cannot use it up. You cannot overuse it. And it just isn't adequate.

Do you see what I mean? I'm reading a book that I'm critiquing for a guy, and part of the language in the book says that the punishment just fit the sin. Well, my thought was that the punishment for sin is death. I guess that fits. But grace just doesn't fit whatever. It's way, way more than I could even imagine. So, me being not worthy, I think I'll just take a little bit. No, you grab as much as you can, all the time. That's what it's there for. You take it. Because when you take it, what happens?

You look up and there's multitudes more. Macaulay's example he used, you write a check for 5,000 bucks and you go to the bank and there's 50,000 in there. Oh, so I think I'll write a check for 50. You go to the bank, there's a half a million in there.

That's how grace works. And it's unmerited. Probably more important to understand the unmeritedness of grace than it is that it's unlimited. Unmerited means there's not anything you have done or could do or will do to merit grace. You can't earn it. And the minute you think you can, it isn't grace anymore. See that? So, the reason it's unmerited is because salvation is by grace through faith and that not of yourself.

It's a gift of God. If I give you a gift and you in any way want to pay me, or I take payment for it. Even a thank you. Thank you's are okay. But even a, well, what can I do for you? It isn't grace anymore. If I invite you over for dinner, you feel obligated to invite me back. What I just did isn't grace.

Okay? So when God comes at us with this unmerited grace, we have to learn That's what God's nature is now because of the work of Christ on the cross. That He comes at us full on with grace, unmerited, all the time. We've got to be brought off of this idea that I must do something so that I'm more pleasing to God at 9.25 in the morning than I was at 9 o'clock.

You're not. You are totally accepted before God because of your position in Christ. He did it all. You didn't do any of it. You see that? When the Lord Jesus Christ, the totally adequate work of Christ, when the Lord Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sins and took you into that cross with Him, He totally satisfied all of God's holy and righteous demands. All of them. Was the cross a gracious act? No, it wasn't. It was a terrible act. It was a horrible act. It was God carrying out His wrath against the thing sin itself.

But once He did, is it done? That's right, the Lord said on the cross right before He died, He said it's mostly finished, I'm leaving the rest up to you guys. No, he said it's finished. What was finished? What was finished was the total demands placed on him by God regarding sin. And so if you believe in the person... Let me back up. So God comes to all of you and says, look, I've done all these wonderful things with my son on the cross.

Do you want part of it? Do you want to be in on it? You say, I think I do. How do I get it? He says, you just believe me. That's all you have to do. So, I say, oh, that's my part. Right? I get credit because I believe. Right? Come on, somebody challenge me. That's not right. Faith is the one thing we can do as human beings that you can't take credit for what you've done. Right? If I believe that Christ died on the cross for my sins, was buried and resurrected, did I contribute my 5% to my salvation? Where's the value in the salvation message? Where is it?

It's all in the object of what I believe. There's no value in my faith at all. I can't stand before God and say, look, I believe you owe me. As soon as there's an O thing, there's no grace anymore. So when you believe, not only the salvation message, but the identification message, or anything you read in the Word of God, the value is in what you believed, not the fact that you believe. But you don't get to enter in unless you do believe.

So faith is a grace thing. You see that? That's the really cool part about it, that faith is a grace thing. You want to operate as a believer? You have to operate under the principle and the heading and the umbrella of grace. And underneath that principle is faith. You know? You can't go to God and say, I believe now you owe me. Oh yeah? What does He owe you? If grace is an unlimited, unmerited blessing, what does God owe you? Change? What does He owe you?

Nothing. Because if He did, it wouldn't be grace. By the way, Dr. Pepper is really good for you. To understand and to enter into the person and work of the Holy Spirit, keep in mind that A lot of the understanding of the stuff we're going to go through is based on an understanding of the identification truths and grace. You see, grace is not a commodity that comes in a bottle. You don't get 67 bushels an acre. It's not that kind of thing.

Grace is an operating system in which God works. Easiest way to explain this, how many of you own Mac computers? Does does IBM work on them pretty good? No, it doesn't. Different operating systems. How many of you? But I think now you can make them compatible. But when they were first they first came out, you couldn't run Windows on a Mac machine and you couldn't run the OS on a Windows machine because they're different operating systems. Up until the cross of Christ, the operating system of God was a law-based system. If you obey me, I will bless you. If you don't obey me, I will curse you. Enter the cross, job finished.

Now God says, from this point forward, I'm going to operate on a grace basis only. Is it important for us to learn grace? I think so. Would this be a true statement? If I go to God on a legal basis, He's not listening? I want to make a deal with Him? I promise to do and He's going to? No, He's not listening.

He operates towards us now through the Lord Jesus Christ only on a grace basis. So we better find out what the operating system is. Really important to know. Notice the title of the class. The person and the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit will help you understand the grace method. Because the Spirit of God functions on a grace basis only. There is no give and take. There is no, I'll do this if you do that. There's none of that. It's all, I've done it all. It's unlimited for you and it's unmerited. Go for it. believe, okay?

Now, if you, and you don't have to do this, but I just look at the pre-authority of the book that's in front of you and I divided it up so that we could talk about it a little bit. The book was actually not written, it's a compilation of some lectures given by Samuel Rideout. So it's written down from lectures and his notes. So he says, these notes are put before the reader in a hope that in spite of feebleness in presentation, the attention may be drawn to that which is distinguishing mark of Christianity. It's a sad fact that there's not only an ignorance of this great subject on the part of most of God's people, but an ignoring of it by many who are acquainted with it.

So, it's interesting, I was talking to Randy before class and he was chatting with his dad and what did your dad say about identification and grace? Well, we were observing that if you don't understand identification truths and grace and the Holy Spirit, then you don't know who you are in Christ and you don't know how to live the Christian life. You're probably bewildered. Yeah, I have thought for a long time, and believers that are growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus sort of align with me, that the three biggest problems in Christianity are believers don't know who they are, they don't know where they are, and they don't know what they have.

So they try to live like Jews. They still think that they're an extension of Israel. Happen to hump it up to the temple once a week to make atonement for their sins. and they don't realize the unlimited and unmerited blessings that are already theirs. Or it seems like they want the Holy Spirit to give them strength to do their own plan.

That's right. Not to make you all critical, but when you go upstairs and you have a little time over the next few weeks, open up to Him though and just pick at Him. And you're going to be amazed at how many of them are begging God to do something He's already done. You know, oh Lord, won't you bless me? Really? My Bible says He already has.

It's really subtle. Look at those hymns and you will see that they were written by somebody as nice as they sound, who didn't understand grace, who didn't understand identification, didn't know what their position was. and they beg God in some form or another to bless them to some degree that they haven't already been blessed. Gee, they missed Ephesians somewhere. I don't know.

You know, we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. It's hoped that some will get the light of the truth and that others may be stirred afresh to act upon the light that they have. That's really our prayer, that what we cover and what we go through, will in fact stir your hearts because that's why I have been talking for the last few minutes about grace. Do you know that grace is the greatest motivator there is? There's no greater motivator in the universe than grace. So if you have been motivating yourself by what I call the tyranny of the oughts, I ought to be doing this and I ought to be doing that and I shouldn't be doing that, understand that as you learn the grace that's in the Word of God, it will motivate you to live.

And as you learn about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, you will learn about the dependency that will come with your resting that motivates you to move. We think that, gee, if I don't do something, God is just not going to be satisfied or nothing's going to get done.

Well, all the great men of biblical history, especially the New Testament guys, a guy like Paul the Apostle, he wasn't a type A like Courtney. He was a guy who lived and rested in the provision and the grace that God had given him. And the Holy Spirit was the one who did all the work through him. He was type A before he was saved. Yeah, he probably was.

The method of treating a subject has been simply to gather the various scriptures under appropriate heads and to learn their meaning and that's what we're going to do. You'll find a lot of the questions have to do with checking out the scriptures that are in there and what do they mean.

Unscriptural views both as to corporate and individual truth have been frankly examined and tested by the Word of God. There will be some, it isn't this kind of discussions. It need hardly be said that edification in love and not controversy has been the object. The truth of God for all of his people and not for just a select few.

That's a really big problem as I see it within Christianity is that if you somehow find yourself in or somebody gives you a book or something and you get exposed to the identification truths, and you read them, and then you start talking to your Christian buddies about them, and they start thinking, or you start thinking, well I'm ahead of them, and I'm much more spiritual than they are. Where does identification truths show up?

You realize of course that for the church, believers, that the first book of Christianity is the book of Romans, right? You understand that? We'll talk about that from a dispensational standpoint. The Gospels are really Old Testament and Jewish, and of course everything before that is Old Testament. The Acts of the Apostles are a historical book on what they were doing, but if you want to find out what Christianity is, it starts in Romans. Romans is Christianity 101. How soon in Romans do you get the identification truths? What chapter? Six. How many chapters are there of Paul's epistles after Romans 6? You don't have an answer?

Hundreds. The point I'm making is that identification truths is basic Christian understanding. It's not theological. I get two chevrons because I know. It's basic. Every single believer should understand that they were crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ. They should understand that they live only and totally under grace. Only.

It would change everything if that were the truth. You guys know that. You could walk into a church full of a hundred people and within three months educate them on identification and grace. It would change them, the whole dynamic of the room. because they'd stop working so hard, and they'd stop failing so much, and they'd rest. They would rest in their heart.

Now, if you look at the Table of Contents, we are going to go down through the Table of Contents and we're going to follow this right on down. The first lecture is the Holy Spirit and the Dispensations. And here's how it'll go. The questions that you're going to get for this next week have to do with the dispensations before Christ. So that's what next week's lesson will be. The following lesson will be the present age, and the third week will be the millennium. And it all has to do with the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

And we'll talk about dispensation to some degree, and maybe change the word. because dispensation is the cuss word of Christianity. So we're probably going to change it to something else, but I won't tell you what it is yet. If you talk to anybody in any reformed or covenant and you mention the word dispensation, you better be sorry. And it's because you don't understand what it is.

So, and then lecture two, We're going to talk about the work of the Holy Spirit when it comes to salvation. Who does the convicting or the convincing? Who does the regenerating? And what is regeneration? Oh yeah, that kind of lines up with identification, doesn't it? And how about the sealing of the Spirit? Anybody know what a seal is? We don't have them anymore. Do you know what they are? You know what a seal is?

Well, what's the other word for it? There's another word for it. An imprimatur. And there's another word for it. Do you know what it is? It's a stamp. What's that? It's a stamp. It's a stamp where, you know, you would write a letter I would write a letter to Randy.

I didn't want anybody else to read it, but Randy. So I closed it up, put a little hot wax on it, and put my seal so that if it was opened by anybody, they could tell. It guaranteed what was inside. If the person who put his seal on there was somebody like the king, boy, you didn't want to mess with that. It better be opened only by the person who's addressed to. Well the Spirit of God is, and we're going to spend a whole class on the fact that he's the seal. He doesn't have the seal. He is the seal.

Okay? So for those of you who think you're going to get unsaved this afternoon, it's by watching, well no that's next week, the Broncos are on. Can I do a little rabbit trail? Sure, yeah please. A seal keeps somebody out of something? Keeps it private? Actually what it is is a guarantee. It's a guarantee that whatever is inside that document or whatever it is will only be for whoever it was designated for or it was authenticated. I'll give you another example. I'm trying to think. One of my favorite movies of all time is Charlton Heston and the movie where the great chariot race was. Ben-Hur. Cool thing about Ben-Hur, there's a couple of really cool biblical principles in that movie.

One of them is they have an adoption party when he's adopted by Arius into this family of a Roman general. And adoption in ancient times isn't like what we do. It meant that if you were an adopted son, you were entitled to the fortune and everything of the father right then. He didn't have to die for you. Well, Ben-Hur is adopted into this Roman centurion, or he's more than a centurion, he's a general's family.

And he's given a ring. And on that ring, that's the word I'm looking for, is the signet of Arius. So if he stamps it, then it has Arius's authority. So he goes back to Jerusalem and he meets the Roman centurion who put him in the gallows and he sends the ring in and he said this is the son of Arius. The guy's all excited to see him until he walks in the room and it turns out that he is Arius but he's also been hurt. That ring says it all. He has the imprimatur or the signet of the man of authority. That's what the sealing of the spirit is. He's the guarantee.

Another example would be that I would use as a realtor. If you buy a house, or you want to buy a house, one of the things you do is you give the seller some earnest money. The earnest money is to guarantee the closing. If you don't close, theoretically, the earnest money is forfeit. But that says to the seller, I intend to carry through the purchase, and here's the earnest, or here's my seal.

Then I'm going to do what I said I'm going to do. Because some of the things we've learned about as believers is we are positionally totally saved, but there's some stuff coming up. We get new bodies and with some of us that's really exciting. And the next thing we'll talk about is just the assurance. Again, assurance is based on what topic? Assurance has to be based on grace. It can't be based on anything else. It has to be based on the grace of God. And then the third series of lectures will be what is known as sanctification. What does sanctification mean? It means to be set apart. Now, spiritual growth sometimes is referred to as sanctification.

So that leads to a discussion of a third topic that you ought to be aware of, and that's the topic of position and condition. I'm going to put you on the spot now. You have to raise your hand. How many do not know what position and condition is? Cowards. Chicken.

We all have a position in Christ. We all have been blessed with every spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. So as you read the New Testament, Paul's epistles, Peter, James, and John in Hebrews, you will see positional truth. Positional truth is inviolate. It cannot be changed. If you are seated with Christ in the heavenlies today, if your sins have been paid for, if you have been crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ, those are positional truths. as opposed to what your condition might be.

Your walking around everyday experience may line up with your position, it may not. But it's really important to understand that your condition can in no way affect your position. You're pretty sure it can, but it can't. The last time you sinned, which was a couple weeks ago for most of you, didn't you feel like, God somehow is not real happy earth man. I must have lost a couple of steps or positions or something with him, right? Your sinning cannot change your position.

You're a son of God. We taught a class one time that part of it was Lewis Barry Chafer's 34 things that happened to you at the cross and we ended up with a list of over 200 things that were true of every single believer positionally that could never be changed. I was just thinking about, you know, I was raised Catholic, and it's really, I never heard it, I never listened, but over and over, they say the identification truths, I mean, Christ is diabetic, and you know, probably most Catholics would say they believe that, so they have, possibly, I know it's up to God to decide, but they're in the position, right, but the condition, or can be in the position, if they truly believe, if they're not just taking it as like, you know, you hear it enough times, you think you believe it.

How do you get your position? How do you get your position in Christ? Believe in? Believe what? What do you believe? Yeah, you believe the gospel. You believe the gospel, real simple thing, nothing more than that, you get this position of over 200 things. of who you are.

Now I was raised a Catholic too. We went to different churches because they never explained this to us. I wouldn't say they explained it, but they certainly... Not only that, I was educated by the Jesuits. They never explained it either. They didn't know. Not explained, but presented it, certainly, over and over and over.

The difference is this, that I knew who Jesus Christ was from... He was the Son of God. I knew that he had died on a cross for the sins of the world, was buried and resurrected. You know what I didn't know? You were with him. He did it for me. That's what I didn't know. Right. It was just for me. Right.

So is that included in part of the believing? Once you believe in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, this transaction happens to you instantly by being placed into Christ that all of these things become true of you positionally. You probably don't know any of them, other than the fact that you're saved. That's it. So part of growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is learning what your position is. And all of it is by grace. All of it.

So learning position is really important. Now, everybody understand the difference between position and condition? Your condition can be all over the lot. it can be whatever, but your condition can never affect your position at all before God because he operates on grace. He sees you in Christ only. He deals with you on a grace basis no matter what an idiot you are.

So sanctification has to do with indwelling. It has to do with the communion and the anointing. We'll talk a lot about prayer and what it means to walk in the Spirit. One of the questions that I love the most is to ask believers, when you are walking in the Spirit, what's going on behind your eyeballs? What are you looking at? What are you thinking about? It's really important. Walking in the Spirit isn't just a switch, or it isn't when you're praying piously. When you're walking in the Spirit, there's something going on in your mind and your experience. With me, it's complete rest. There's your word. She said with her, it's complete rest. Yeah, that's good. That's really good. Okay, and then we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit for power. There's a difference between being baptized with the Spirit. I'm sorry, I jumped ahead.

We'll talk about the Holy Spirit and how He functions in the Church. The baptism of the Spirit, the unity of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, and the worship by the Spirit. We'll talk about spiritual gifts there. The Holy Spirit for power, be filled with the Spirit.

What's confession really means? Boldness, guidance, and ministry. And then lecture six, the Holy Spirit and Scriptures, Inspiration, Enlightenment, and Prophecy. And then we end up with the Holy Spirit in Christ before his incarnation, during his earthly life, the present dispensation, and the coming of the Lord.

So there's a lot of stuff to learn. But it's the kind of stuff that as we enter into it and grow into it, you'll get to do what you get to do, which is rest. That's the cool thing. So any questions? Courtney? I just want to go back to a couple of things. That's why he takes so much time. He's got to go back. I've been fighting my time. We have time. We've never finished this thoroughly before. I think back to what Holly said, that a lot of, you know, teach identification. They do not teach identification. They teach the free gift of salvation.

You know, to get that part. But I'll go to what you say that will irritate everybody. What are their safe centers? Yeah, let's ask the question. Let's show of hands. Now come on, no chickens this time. How many of you think that the term saved sinner is an appropriate term? Cowards, put your hands up. There's one, there's two, three, four, five, six. Okay, we got six. six no's. There's no such thing as a safe sinner positionally. When you are crucified, buried and resurrected and your seat is in Christ, are you still a sinner? You may sin conditionally, but your identity is no longer as a sinner. So you need to clarify the question. No, no. It wouldn't be a trick question if I clarified it. That's my point. And that's the identification part.

That we have been co-crucified and separated positionally and replaced Look at how many verses say about in Christ. That's positionally where we are now. 147. We're not saved sinners. We're in Christ. We're positionally in Christ. And that's the beginning of the work of the Holy Spirit. I like the thing work. And it goes with our message of grace. Unmeritum. Who does the work? And that's why this class is important. After the identification It's done by the Holy Spirit. But if you don't understand our separation, the old man is the one who wants to do the work. And if you don't understand that separation, you're not going to understand a lot of what we're going to talk about.

And that's why the word confession is so important. When you as a believer sin, what is God's remedy for it? That you confess. Well, confession isn't a Catholic deal where you make a list of the stuff and you get absolution. I'll give you absolution.

The last thing I want to point out is the fact that we will start out with and spend a lot of time talking about the Holy Spirit is a person. Now I didn't want to do this, and I know I live under grace, but if I hear somebody say the Holy Spirit's an it, it's 25 bucks. The Holy Spirit's not the force, he's not an it, he's a person. Well there goes half the lesson, you don't need questions like that. So that's what we're going to focus on next week is the person of the Holy Spirit. It's really important because most people look at the Holy Spirit and they think it's the force from Star Wars. Right? That's true. If you don't understand the application, the Holy Spirit is used to empower the old man to do the law or whatever. That's a really good point.

Okay, these are the questions for next week. I hope I got enough. Now, I want to repeat the question. The questions, the questions are designed for discussion. So if you don't answer or don't answer or can't answer or whatever, bring them up next week. We want to talk about this one. You want one? Okay, I know the buzzer's gone off. Was there any questions about anything we talked about? Yeah. What the heck? Okay. Okay, let's close in prayer. Dear Father, how we thank you for I guess we thank you today for your Holy Spirit who has been sent to teach us and to conform us to the very image of your Son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his precious name, Amen.