Person & Work of the Holy Spirit
Mike Doyle · Jul 14, 2013
Holy Spirit (2013), No. 27
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926356491399

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

Lesson 13, hopefully we get it done today. So we go to lesson 14 actually. Now we ended up last week down at question 6. We talked about all the provisions of grace that God gives to the believer. And we went through some of those and they were kind of exciting. All of you with smiles on your face knew exactly what we were talking about. And then we got the question seven, which we began just sort of touched on.

Why is our walk not always according to the grace provided? We're on page one. Lesson 13. Question seven. I don't know exactly what it is. Forty one. Forty one. Well, it said the impartation of the new nature does not obliterate the old nature. OK. Everybody with me? No. Some of you are still asleep. What did you say? I said the impartation of the new nature does not obliterate the old. OK. This is a really, really important part for us to understand. And that's on page 43. So we live under all of this wonderful grace, which we do. And as we study and learn the provisions of that grace, and we walk as believers, it's wonderful. But our walk is not always in accordance with the grace provided. And so how come?

And Helen said it's because we have, the write-out says we find that the impartation of a new nature, which we all have, does not obliterate the old nature. Now there is a whole school of theology that says once you become a Christian, you have this new resurrected life in Christ, a new nature.

And the old nature dies. Well, if that's true, how come you keep sinning? You have to have a source for sin, and sin comes from the nature. So the problem with the believer is that he has two natures. Just because you have a new nature and the old nature says, oh gee, I guess I'll just have to stop picking on them because they've got this new nature, doesn't happen that way. The old nature is always trying to assert itself.

And as we'll talk about going forward, how do you deal with that old nature as it tries to assert or manifest its activity through you, the believer. That's what the next few questions will be about. Isn't it also, I mean, you said obliterate the old nature, but isn't it a lot also just lack of faith? I mean, you just don't believe what the word says.

So, I mean, I know that's probably, it's the old nature doubting and creating all that, which is the root of it is that the old nature is still there. and do you believe this? I mean, you know, I go through, and I've said this a hundred times, you know, consider it all joy, my brother, when you encounter various trials. Do you believe that?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, you have the information. Yeah. Lots of believers don't have the information that they were crucified with Christ. Yeah. And if they don't have the information, then they're what I would call a no-mover. Yeah. Not really, but...

But with the right information then, what are you left with? Now think about this. You have the information that you were crucified with Christ. Somebody told you about it and showed you in the word of God where it was. And you thought, gee, that's a really exciting concept. But I find that the old nature is still as active as it's always been. I'm sinning and I'm worrying and I'm doing all these other things.

It comes down to, which is true, Is God telling me the truth? Or is my experience the truth? Which is it? The sermon last Sunday was about you can believe a lie or you can know the truth, but if you don't believe the truth, it's just as bad as if you didn't believe a lie. So that's really important.

If you do not, it's kind of a cruel way to say it, but if you have the correct positional information from the word of God and you don't believe it, what have you done? You've called God a liar. You've said, hey, my experience supersedes whatever you tell me. So when God tells you something via his word, You know, you only have one responsibility, and that's to believe him. Now you can't go to him and say, I'll believe you if you somehow demonstrate to me that you're telling me the truth. No. If he told it to you, that's enough. You take God at his word because he's God, not because he gave you some spurious experience.

See that? Once you do believe him though, about black identification, hang on because you're going for a ride, he's going to prove to you that what he's told you in position is true in experience. He will conditionally set you free via the cross. He'll do it.

Because he doesn't intend to do it. We sometimes look at God as though he's a politician. He's not. He's the God of the universe. When he tells you something, he means it. He means it about conforming all of us to the image of his son. He means it. And he's going to do it whether you like it or not. Whether you cooperate or not. Because when you leave the planet, guess what? You're in heaven. Because you see him face to face.

So it's important I think for us to realize that even though the grace is provided to walk in the spirit, it's not always going to be like that because there are opposing forces in the context of your old nature that function against you all the time.

Now the old man is a very interesting character. It's like he didn't get the message. His whole purpose is to be relevant, to make you notice, to get you to depend or to somehow focus on his, even if it's really logical, he wants to be able to be relevant.

J.B. Stoney said, think about this when I say it, that the old man will do anything but not do anything. The idea is to put him totally out of business. No relevancy at all. He has no elbow room. He just doesn't fit. And the only way that's done is by belief. You're resting by faith in the provision provided in the identification truths and you let the spirit of God work it out. He will make you free. From what? What's the thing you want to be free from the most? Me. My old man. Conditioned.

Name one mistake that believers can make in the sanctification process. Does everybody understand what the sanctification process is? This is all those really tough spiritual push-ups you do to get better than you were yesterday. Sanctification means to be set apart. You have already been set apart positionally, right? But then there's this process that goes on in which the Spirit of God is setting you apart in your condition.

So, what's one mistake a believer can make? That the flesh can be sanctified. We should have no confidence in the flesh. The mistake is that you believe that you can sanctify or Christianize the flesh. You can teach them how to be a Christian. What's the problem with that?

You're still relevant. See, if you work on the flesh, the flesh is still active. The quote that the write-out gives is a really good one. or since you are dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, since that's true, why as though living in the world are you subject to ordinances, ordinances are like rules, laws, after the commandments and doctrines of men which have indeed a show of wisdom and will-worship and humility and neglecting of the body to the satisfaction of the flesh. You see all of that or will worship humility, neglecting of the body, all satisfies the flesh, because the flesh is doing something.

We can make the flesh moral and religious, but we cannot make it please God. Isn't that something? Everybody hear that? We can make the flesh moral, but we cannot make it please God. Why do you think God had to come up with this, that's not the way to put it, why do you think God said that the only remedy for the flesh is crucifixion. Why? Because it is the only remedy? Because the flesh won't come around. It will not come around. You cannot make him Christian. You cannot make it better.

It's joined with Adam and Adam was under condemnation. Sure. We talked a couple of weeks ago that Those that are of the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. If you come from the flesh you have no choice. You are going to do the fleshly stuff. It would be like your Labrador trying to make its own cow. A cow or a cat. My Labrador is really smart. He is a great He's a dog. My sin nature cannot walk in the spirit. Why not? It's not of God. It's not of God. And you can't train it to do it. So what do you do? I hate to tell you that you put the laws out. Nothing for you to do.

That goes back to what I think. The whole, what we've talked about many times, is understanding the identification, the co-crucifixion. You look at the vast majority of the teachings, it's a program to make you morally correct, to make you look like a Christian, to fix up the old man. All of them are based on that, or a vast majority, if you go to the bookstores or whatever. It's all that, and it's just that rudimentary misunderstanding was crucified positionally.

And until you understand that, I don't think you can even enter into fully what grace is. Because you're always trying to do something and grace is the unmerited. And until you get that, I don't think you can fully begin to understand grace and all these things. And all this stuff like how you can consider it all joy.

Because you know you're placed in him and whatever's happening is sovereignly in control and all those different things. You don't know that until you understand that positional co-crucifixion. And that's where the growth begins. Once you understand that, then you can begin to understand how wretched the old man is. And understand where you are positionally. And that's where the growth comes.

I think there comes a time in every growing believer's life when they quietly look to God and say thank you for doing the right thing with me and that's crucifying me. Thank you for not fixing me up. Thank you for crucifying me because that's what I deserve. So when we say why is crucifixion the only answer to the flesh? We cannot please God in the flesh so thus the seeker after holiness in the flesh may strive may starve or mortify his body merely to please the flesh or puff himself up.

Galatians 5.24 says they that are Christ, which you all are, have already done crucified the flesh with its affections and it has strong desires. A crucified thing is not to be bettered or sanctified. Trust me I know that it's not easy to get this idea straight in your mind that you really do have a brand new, you are a brand new creature in Christ that does not need to be improved.

I have a problem understanding crucified. Who decides? Crucified. Oh crucified. I have a problem understanding that because my concept of that being Crucified is the carrying out of the judgment. Let's talk about crucified for a minute then. Crucifixion is just a horrible way of dying. What's death mean? Separation does not mean annihilation. So I've probably given this demonstration a hundred times.

Here's the sin nature. You're born an atom. You think you have free will when in fact the sin nature runs you around like a puppet. And the only choices you get is which sin to commit and which sin, well I think I'll pick this sin over that sin. I think I'll be sinfully righteous over robbing a bank.

Sin, sin, sin. And so the cross of Christ paid the penalty for all of the sins that I have ever committed and the whole world. But what did God do about this sin nature that controls me? The Lord Jesus Christ became sin. Your sin nature and my sin nature got on him just like it does on me. So what happens to the Lord Jesus when that happens?

He dies. Death is separation. He separates from all of our sin natures, and he's resurrected to newness of life. You're in him now. The sin nature is still in you, but you're in him. You are dead to the sin nature. The sin nature isn't dead. You're dead to it. So you don't have to respond to it anymore. It isn't dead.

You are. You're dead, buried, and resurrected. You have a new life in Christ, or put it another way, you have a new master. who is the resurrected glorified Christ himself. That's who you are now. That's who your identity is. But you still have a sin nature floating around inside of you trying to reassume control. If you don't know, like Courtney says, if you don't know that you were crucified, you have no chance of ever walking in the spirit. You have no chance. Do you see that? Does that make sense?

I think one of the big deals is that our sin nature separated us from God and when Jesus took on our nature, he separated us, I mean he separated himself from God, right? I just think of that as such a huge thing that he loved us so much that he was willing to separate from God for... And what separated us? was when our sin was put on him and he became identified with the sin and what did the father do when that happened? He turned away from it. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

That had to be more than actual death. That was the thing that caused the blood sweat in the garden. That was the thing. Can you imagine the father and the son have had this intimacy on their level for all eternity and this one time and place in history the father turns away from the son? And guess why he did it? Because we put him there. Well he chose. He loved us so much. He chose to do that. The son and the father worked this out because they had to satisfy the same issue. And they did. They did. And when the Lord Jesus is raised to newness of life, you're not floating around in the air someplace, you're in him. And when he's resurrected, so are you. That's your new position. That's Colossians 3, 1, 3, 4. Since you've been risen with Christ. And I think that's the distinction to a position and condition. I think of that, you know, this crucifixion, what that means, and I think it comes down to position too.

As we talked about who our advocate being the Holy Spirit, but also Christ is our advocate. And we are placed into Him. And now, when God looks at us, He looks at His Son. And positionally, that's what happens right now. Christ is at the right hand of God, so when He looks at us, He doesn't see us with all our warts and sins and other stuff. He sees us in Christ.

And then he pours out his love, that's grace and everything else, because how much did he love his son? And now we are in his son. So when he looks at us, you know, we beat ourselves up so much and the old man is the one beating us up for all the sins and all the strife and all the anger and different things. But God doesn't see us anywhere like that anymore. He sees us in his son.

And that's the key right now. If this comes back to the understanding in walking, If we truly understand that, that's how you can have the peace that surpasses all understanding. The rest in this world is understanding that that's how God sees us, is in Christ. He sees us, he looks at Christ and he sees us.

So, from a tactical standpoint, we are encouraged and told in the Word of God to mortify, put to death, put out of business the deeds of the flesh. Doesn't that make perfect sense? that if you have been crucified, then God would say, okay, now that you are crucified, buried and resurrected, I want you to put the deeds of the flesh totally out of business.

And you say, okay, how do you do that? It's pretty simple, how do you do it? You do it by faith, by reckoning. I don't have to go there, I can reckon myself, I can believe that I am dead to sin and alive to God. If that's what you really believe, then your sin nature doesn't have a place with you. So let's say you don't do such a good job at it. My question is, what happens if you're careless or fail to mortify the deeds of the body?

What happens? What the result is, is that as Breitdahl says, you grieve the Holy Spirit. You grieve him. What does grieve mean? I'm going to answer two questions at a time. Question 11 is what does the word grieve mean when we grieve the Holy Spirit?

Rydow says, but think, beloved brethren, that the word grief is not the grief of Christ our Lord over our sin. He says, is not the grief of Christ our Lord over our sin sufficient? The Lord has put him to grief when he bore our sins. Is it possible that we should now cause pain to the blessed spirit of God? Oh, how it should make us hate and abhor all forms of sin.

Here's the point. The truth and the word of God about your identification with Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection is the basis from which the Holy Spirit works. He only works from that basis. He looks at every one of us as persons who have been crucified, buried, resurrected, and in our position in Christ. And from that position, he's always working to demonstrate the grace of God towards you so that you might walk in the Spirit. And by the way, this is a good time to ask this question.

If you're walking in the Spirit, what's going on behind your eyes? What are you looking at? What's going on in your mind? What's happening when you're walking in the Spirit? One at a time. Well, you're beholding Christ, it's like what Randy said last time when we were finishing, that we want to behold him. In other words, also we set our minds in the heavenly places and then the signature only distracts us. So we must acknowledge how and in what way specifically it distracts us. In other words, confess the sin.

Whose job is it to cause you to walk in the Spirit? Is it your job? No. It's the Spirit of God's job. You live under grace, right? So God doesn't look at you and say, I'm depending on you to make the right decision here or to heal or to do this or to do that so that you can walk in the Spirit. No. No. The grace of God comes at us so aggressively and so full on that all you have to do is take it. You're driving down the road with the radio off and you're communicating with God in your mind, right?

And somebody cuts you off. I had a guy cut me off yesterday. Remember that guy? What happens right then? Do you have to go through this litany in your mind about how to get yourself restored? Do you have to go through this litany in your mind about how to get yourself? The spirit of God decided to take a 15 minute rest there and let you walk in the flesh for a while and then he'll get back to you? No. He's there all the time. Every second. All the time. No matter what the circumstance is, you learn to be dependent. You learn to understand that he is always, always, focusing you in on the Lord Jesus Christ.

But you sin. What does he do? Well, you know, in going through this, I had just kind of a different nuance on that. I thought, you know, grieving the Holy Spirit was because you were sinning. He was having to deal with you and your sin. But as you went through here, it's kind of like grieving the Holy Spirit is more of a, all he wants to do is reveal Christ.

That's right. And so he's got to quit doing that and convict you of sin, or he's got to He has taken upon himself this job of revealing Christ to the believer and having the believer live in this umbrella of grace. So you're so cool, you decide to sin. Well, you can't sin your way out of Christ, so what does he have to do? He's got to stop doing the revealing thing and go to work on restoring you. That's a grieving process for him. Because that isn't what he really wants to do.

I love my children. You love your children. You love to love them. When they're being jerks, what do you have to do? You have to discipline them. You don't like doing that. You're grieved about that. You want to have this interaction of love with them all the time.

It's the same way with the Holy Spirit. I think it's not only, you know, we equate it to being sinning and we turn our backs. I think it's also not only, it's kind of what Nana said, it's knowing that what if you're pouring out your love to your kids and they don't respond? I think that is more almost grief than the sinning part, is that you're pouring out love of Christ to the individual and they don't respond. I think that's where the grief is. It's like doing everything to point you to the Lord in the intimacy and you don't respond. I think that's where more of the grieving is. Are you listening to that? Yes. When you read the Word of God and you fellowship as believers and you begin to understand the grace of God, the Holy Spirit is, yeah, they're getting it.

And then you decide just not to go with it, not to live under the grace, not to take the grace, not to believe it. And I'm not talking about, oh, you decide you're going to be a wretched sinner. You just decide, like Courtney says, ah, it isn't that important. There's no greater heartache in anybody's life than when somebody just decides, I'm just not into you anymore. You know what I mean? I'll tolerate you, I'll hang out with you, but I'm just not into you anymore. Oh boy.

After what God has done, and Christ has accomplished on the cross, and the spirit of God is full on implementing that in the believer's life so that he can rest, and you say, you in essence say to him, I'm not into that anymore. Well that would grieve me, but that was my job. You know, we've all read about people that would crawl on their knees, you know, a lot of people. Mostly Catholics. You know, and injure themselves. Sure. Trying to drive out the badness in them, but it never works. No, no. I mean, when you think about it, there isn't anything that God left for you to do, other than believing.

He took care of everything. Everything. Not only the bad part, But the good part too. And this is the part the Spirit works on. And He wants to demonstrate the love of Christ to you as a believer and you're busy crawling on your knees. It's like my son John, he wouldn't do this, but my son John would be working hard to become my son John. He already is. I already love him. He doesn't have to work to do it. Now some families set it up that the family dynamic is like that, where the kids have to demonstrate their love to the parents, but that's not the way God is. God wants you just to receive from him. So moving along today, question 12.

What does the Holy Spirit do in the case of you grieving him? Kind of interesting what Rideout says, what a mercy it is that this is the case. How many a child of God has been brought to himself by the consciousness of having grieved the Spirit? Have you ever been conscious of grieving the Holy Spirit?

Only honest women here. The rest of you guys are more than this. His peace is gone. His communion has ceased. He is miserable until he judges the evil. confesses and forsakes it, instead of going on in carelessness only to fall deeper and deeper into sin, he is made to feel the seriousness of that which blocks the intercourse or interaction between the spirit and himself. When you start teaching grace to people, they don't think that this is possible. They don't think you can live without rules. They don't think you can live in a relationship that if you grieve the spirits you would be so sensitive to that that it would cause you to adjust your behavior. As an example, I have a relationship with Donna. I know what I'm not supposed to do. I know that if I do certain things that she's going to be upset about. Guess what? I avoid those kinds of things.

I like harmony. I like intimacy. Same thing with the Lord Jesus Christ. It isn't that I'm going to choose to be a really bad guy or a really good person. I don't want to do anything that is not consistent with Christ. I don't care what it is, because I don't want to ever lose that intimacy. And that's what the Spirit does. When you go off the rails, so to speak, you understand instantly, wow, I like where it says he shows us by his grief where we have drifted. Because I think a lot of times it is drifting. It is drifting.

Seems like the law comes in where, like with your relationship with Donna, let's say Donna doesn't like it when you leave dishes in the sink. So the law seems to come in when you turn the focus, I will not leave dishes in the sink because leaving dishes in the sink is bad." It's like, that isn't the point. The point is, I'm not going to leave dishes in the sink because I know Donna likes it when I put them away.

Or I might clean up the ones that are already there because I know it's confusing. Yeah, even go further. So it's not like that. It seems like it's not the sin itself. It's the grieving part that you're more concerned about. You know, some Christians like to spend a lot of time talking about your conscience, and how you know when you sinned, and you need these mile markers to sort of tell you that's why you need the law. But if you have an intimacy with Christ, you don't need any of that.

Because you know. The Spirit of God lets you know when you agree to Him. And you know what? He gives us the instant avenue to restoration. You don't do a 15 minute grieve, or a 30 minute grieve, or a 45 minute grieve. Once the Spirit of God lets you know, or you know that the intimacy somehow has waived, has disappeared, you have instant access back. You confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to restore you to righteousness.

I kind of know that he does it in the instant and everything and that when you confess or when you like in your brain acknowledge by words like this is what it was like you live in reality he forgives you even all the other like instantly but it seems to me like when you go on in some kind of life pattern that is not healthy to the point that it has become sin. It is forgiven, of course, but sometimes it seems to me that it is worthy if he reveals that life pattern or what to confess it even though you know it has already been forgiven because what helps is you and him face the same reality. Like even after a year or two years you come to the point, yeah, that has been wrong the whole time, even though it has been forgiven. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, the grace of God never stops no matter what you do. But there are times, the Holy Spirit is such a gentleman, that if you say to him, I want to do this, he's going to say, OK, help yourself. You don't get the rest of Christ about it, but if you want to do it, you go ahead. And we'll just see how it works out for you. And so you learn. You learn the child training aspect of, wait a minute, that's not of the Lord. I shouldn't be going there. That is really not of Christ. And so I'm not going there for that reason alone.

It's either satisfying the flesh or satisfying Christ. That's where it comes down to. and every satisfaction that the believer has focused in on Christ is perfect for the believer because he has the life of Christ. Everything that's inconsistent with Christ is not who you are. I've said this before, do you know sinning is spiritual insanity? You're crazy people if you sin because it isn't who you are. It's not normal for you as a believer to sin. It's not wrong. It's crazy. It's insanity. See that?

It would be like the Labrador getting the new cat nature and then still wanting to bark because he remembers. So the Holy Spirit's job to finish up question 12 is to restore the believer to the position of fellowship. But he does it in such a way that you don't get to sweep anything under the carpet. You probably, actually the learning process is acute for you because you get very sensitive to what's of Christ and what isn't of him. Actually there's a lot of liberty in that.

Why is it that grace is so Well, it takes a lifetime to really understand grace. Why is it that all these years, all of us have heard about grace, if no other place, an amazing grace, the psalm. But at this time of life, grace, means something totally different. I have actually a two part answer to that. Number one, up until the time a human being meets the Lord Jesus Christ, he knows nothing about grace, nothing about grace.

All he knows is cause and effect, some sort of legal system, if you obey me I will bless you, if you disobey me I will curse you. everything has a cause and effect. If you come to the Lord Jesus Christ on a grace basis, you understand that all of the work was done by God and he presents it to you and says if you believe me, which is a non-meritorious act, I will save you for all eternity. I will. And you say, That's a great deal, I think I'll go for it. So you believe him. Then, here you are, you think, oh my goodness, that was a hard thing for me when the guys were telling me about salvation.

You mean to tell me that if I believe in the person and work of Christ that he will save me for all eternity and there's nothing else for me to do? Never learned that in the world. There's always something else for me to do, but not in salvation. Guess what? That's the beginning. That principle never changes in your Christian life.

So if you're never taught, if you're not saved on a grace basis, or you're not taught grace, you don't know it. You have to be taught grace. We all have to be taught grace. Isn't grace even the disciplining part? Say that again? Isn't grace even the disciplining part? Oh yes. Because if he didn't do it, that would be to our bad. That's right. Think about this.

The definition that we've established for grace is the one from Macaulay. And if you divide it up and think about it, it's the unmerited, totally unmerited, unlimited blessings from God based on the totally adequate work of Christ. Who gets the credit? Christ does. But because of what they did, they extend this grace to you overwhelmingly.

And you stand there with your finger in your ear thinking, what is this stuff? And your sin nature is thinking, how can I get a piece of this grace? There's no room for you, your sin nature and grace. Because there's nothing for them to do. When God comes at you, the picture I have, if you've ever been down to Cape Kennedy, And you ever watch one of those shells go off with all that energy coming out of the back of it? If you're standing on pad 39A when they light that sucker off, that's what living under grace is like. There's so much grace, so aggressively, so fast. And what can you do about that? Stand there and take it. That's what you're supposed to do. I can go back to what I said a hundred times. It's the identification.

Once you understand co-crucifixion, Adam's out, your old flesh is gone, then you can begin to understand grace. But until that time, most teaching is, how do you get better? How do you, but there's the wrong point, how do you get better? How do you get better than being in Christ?

And most of the teaching, and you know, and the Lord has had you for how many years, learning, you know, other, but it's, and I go through, I was talking to Vern yesterday, 20 years in the Brethren, people who basically put a lot of this together never heard it, and read Galatians. How could I read Galatians and not understand this? How could I read Romans and not understand this? But I did for 20 plus years. And yet, once you understand that, it is amazingly freeing. And then you begin to understand how grace works, because it's nothing of you. You know, and I think of how grace, God pours it out.

He's pouring it out to his son who we're in. How much does he love his son? And he, of course he wants to pour everything into his son. We're there. That's how I can receive grace and how this works. It's nothing of me. God wants to pour this out to his son who he loved from eternity past. And we're in him. That, once you understand that, You can understand grace, how that works. That timing is his too though, right? It's the Holy Spirit's doing it. It's your own life. It's your own life. That's what I do. When we were praying for your friend who's sick and the war may take home, she will learn grace right to the very last second. She will learn grace according to Ephesians. She'll learn a grace in a turn. That's right.

He's going to pull Grace out in eternity. And you think about how much the Spirit of God has to overcome. I mean, we walk around every day saying, well, if I pray about that, God will do this. No, He won't. He already did it. That's what I think is so exciting about Grace is that we are all different. We're all created different. So we are all in different places. in our life and in our walk. And the minute we start saying, oh, well, that person should be here, then we don't understand the grace that God has for us. That's a good point. That's a great point. Quickly, last two questions.

What's the example of the farmer overcoming evil with good? If you've read the thing, you realize it. The example was, what does a farmer do when he has weeds in his field? If he goes down and chops them down, the weeds come back two at a time, three at a time. So what does he do? He plants a bunch of grass to choke out the weeds. Grace is the grass that chokes out the weeds. Yeah, but that's the picture that, you know, being from the country, I mean, he plants grass. Now, now what's he going to do? There's no weeds. It's beautiful. It's green. Yeah, but he can't eat the grass. It's just a metaphor. Okay, last question. Why isn't surrender or yielding the pathway to spiritual maturity? Well, that wasn't the last question. Why isn't you yielding the pathway to spiritual maturity?

Because of you. Yes, eyes are on you. What's that? Eyes are on you. Eyes are on you. Anybody else? When you yield, what are you yielding? Yourself. The old self. So the last question is, if it's not surrender, then what is it? God's right. If it isn't surrender, then it must be crucifixion. Thank God for that.

Isn't it wonderful to discover at the end that all of this sweat that I've been going through and all of these spiritual push-ups that I've done all my life, I didn't have to do them. It's all done. It was my job just to believe in it. That was it. That's all I wanted.

I go back to 2 Peter 3.18, grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus. They're linked together. And it's a growing process. It's throughout all life. You grow in the grace and knowledge of Him, and they go together. And once you understand who He is, that's who you are. And you understand the grace. And that's a growing process.

I was going to read this verse. How radically different from every form of sanctification that devout minds have ever devised. With this I close. Keep the cross before you dear brethren. Let us ever say with the Apostle, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Not surrender, but death accomplished, death in the person of Christ. Thus we pass dry shod, as the type has it, out of Egypt, of the bondage to sin, into Canaan, and the liberty of the spirit. And still, with the sense of all the wondrous fullness of the blessings in Christ, we will say, with the same dear servant of Christ whom we have just quoted, not as though I had already attained, neither were already perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which I was apprehended of Christ Jesus. To me, to live is Christ. That's what walking in the Spirit is.

So let's close. Dear Father, how are we thinking? for doing everything for causing us to be resurrected in your son the Lord Jesus and for giving us your spirit to make all of that so real to us that we would rest. We would recognize that your provision for us is perfect and the only one that we need to be concerned about if what's acceptable is acceptable to you at this certain age and we may walk and live by faith and rest in the grace that you've provided. Thank you, Father, we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.