The Christian's Life and Spiritual Power

The most obvious manifestation is the believer's Christlike character and behaviour, in that he has evidence of
the Fruit of the Spirit. We could say that the daily life of such a one as this is full of joyful holiness and power.
The Holy Spirit is working into believers exactly what He did in the first century church. The Spirit-filled man
or woman should closely resemble the description found in Acts 2:44-47:

Unity
"All that believed were together." It is not possible for the church to know the fullness of the Spirit until there is
true unity and fellowship. Where there is bitterness and contention there will be disunity. Minor differences
must be laid aside and forgotten, while major ones ought to be worked through with brotherly love. Hearts that
are occupied by the Holy Spirit cannot help being bound together in love and unity. For there to be unity
believers must have mutual lowliness, forbearance and peace.

Self-sacrifice
"They had all things common." The Holy Spirit frees the Christian from selfishness and covetousness. Self-
centredness is replaced with self-sacrifice and generosity. Covetousness is replaced with a joyful willingness to
assist others who may have material needs, even to the point of selling "possessions and goods." There will be
no hesitation about letting go of the things that others have more need of. This calls for self-denial on our part.

Love
This love is not in word only, but is both warm and practical. It "seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked,
thinketh no evil" (1 Corinthians 13:5). This kind of love makes the believer to spend and be spent for the
benefit of others. Such love can only be found where people are truly filled with the Holy Spirit. It is only
through the Holy Spirit that we can love others as ourselves, and wholeheartedly love God.

Worship
God's children love to draw near to Him, for they hunger to know more of His truth. They delight to converse
with God in prayer and to praise Him both in public meeting and in private. The gathering together of the saints
to worship God is never boring, instead it is glorious for the believer.

Joy
There was "gladness" in the hearts of the early church. The Holy Spirit filled them with the same joy He wants
for us today (Romans 15:13; John 15:11). This joy filled their hearts even in the worst of tribulations (2
Corinthians 7:4). So it is that our joy can be "unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Peter 1:18).

Singleness of heart
There was no compromise amongst those who were filled with the Holy Spirit, for they served God with
singleness of heart. They had laid everything upon the altar and refused to take it back. Their minds were set
upon one thing - to fully know the Lord Jesus Christ. Their lives had one aim - to glorify God by preaching the
truth to the lost.

Favour with all the people

It is a good thing to be a Christian in church or in private, but Christlikeness must be manifested as we interact
with those who do not know the Lord too. Do sinners admire our lives? Do we live in a way that makes them
envious enough to want he same blessing? The lost are more likely to respond to our words if they see us living
the Christian life. In this way more will be added to the church.

Conclusion
The same Holy Spirit, who filled the believers of the early church, abides and works in us today. We must
allow Him to live His life through us without any hesitation on our part. He is able to manifest Himself through
us in a mighty and powerful way, and thus bring glory and honour to the Lord Jesus Christ. As we permit Him
to reign in us we will have the spiritual power to extend the Kingdom of God through the preaching of His
word.
 The Ministry of the Holy Spirit
By John Macarthur

Introduction

You cannot study the New Testament long without seeing that there is a dichotomy between what we
are responsible to do as Christians and what has already been done on our behalf. To understand
the distinction is to get a grip on the basics of our faith.

On the one hand, Scripture makes clear how we are to live, act, think, and speak. We are enjoined to
be this or to commit ourselves to do that.

But on the other hand, much of the New Testament emphasizes what Christ has already done for us.
It says that we are called, justified, sanctified, and kept in the faith through no effort of our own. We
learn that Christ and the Holy Spirit are continually interceding on our behalf. And we discover that
we have an inheritance that cannot be measured in human terms.

The Coming of the Comforter

Most of Jesus' final discourse to His disciples consists not of commandments they were responsible
to obey, but of promises He would fulfill on their behalf. John 14:15-26 is the heart of His message of
comfort--that after His departure, the Holy Spirit would come in His place:

"If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you
another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world
cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He
abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. After a
little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live
also. In that day you will know that I am in My Father and you in me, and I in you. He who has
My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be
loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot)
said to Him, "Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and
not to the world?" Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word;
and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who
does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the
Father's who sent Me. These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the
Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things,
and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

The promises Jesus made in that brief passage are staggering. To whom are they made? In context,
Jesus is speaking to His eleven disciples, but the scope of His promises is broader than that. In verse
15 He says, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." That implies the promises that follow
apply to all who love Jesus Christ. Thus they apply to all believers in Christ, whose love for Christ is
characterized by their obedience.

We cannot miss Jesus' clear statement here that the proof of genuine love for Him is obedience to
His commands (a subject I explain in great depth in my book The Gospel According to Jesus [Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1988, 1994]). The New Testament repeats that truth a number of times. John
14:21 says, "He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who
loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." Verses 23-24
repeat the same truth: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word...He who does not love Me does
not keep My words."
To those who are obedient, the Lord extends a number of promises. They fall into the category of
things that have been accomplished on our behalf without effort on our part. They all are tied to the
coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, Teacher, and Helper who would minister to the disciples
when Jesus left. Together these promises constitute a legacy left by our Lord to all who love Him.

The Indwelling Spirit

The promise of the Holy Spirit is the culmination of all that Jesus said to comfort those eleven
troubled men. In that hour of turmoil, they feared being left alone. However Jesus assured them that
they would not be left to fend for themselves; they would have a supernatural Helper. The Greek
word translated "Helper" (parakletos) literally means "one who is called alongside." The King James
Version translates it "Comforter," which is one of its meanings.

The Greek word translated "another" may provide a helpful clue in understanding Jesus' meaning in
John 14. There are two Greek words frequently translated "another": heteros and allos. Sometimes
the biblical authors used those words interchangeably, but sometimes they used heteros to speak of
another of a different kind and allos to speak of another of the same kind (e.g. the "different" [heteros]
gospel vs. "another" [allos] gospel in Galatians 1:6-7).

Allos is the word Jesus used to describe the Holy Spirit: "another [allos] Helper." That could be His
way of saying, "I am sending you One of exactly the same essence as Me." He wasn't sending just
any helper, but One exactly like Himself with the same compassion, the same attributes of deity, and
the same love for them.

Jesus had been the disciples' helper for three years. He had helped them, comforted them, and
walked alongside them. Now they would have another Helper--One exactly like Jesus--to minister to
them as He had.

The Holy Spirit is not a mystical power; He is a person just as Jesus is a person. He is not a floating
fog or some kind of ghostlike emanation. It is unfortunate that the translators of the King James
Version used the term Ghost instead of Spirit. For generations people have had the idea that the Holy
Spirit is an apparition, something like Casper the Friendly Ghost, the 1950s and 60s comic book and
cartoon character! But He's not a ghost; He's a person.

All believers have two paracletes: the Spirit of God within us and the Son of God in heaven. First
John 2:1 says, "If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."
The Greek word translated "Advocate" is parakletos.

The disciples must have been greatly encouraged and comforted to hear Jesus say that He would
send another Helper to minister to them when He left. But Jesus' promise extended beyond that. His
next words beautifully culminate the message of comfort: "that He may be with you forever" (John
14:16). Not only would the Holy Spirit come to dwell with them, but also He would never leave.

The apostle Paul said that Christ in us is the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27), and Christ promised His
Spirit would reside in us (John 14:17). And He will reside in us permanently. Jesus didn't tell the
disciples He would come back and leave again. Nor did He say He would leave and be back in two
thousand years. He said He would leave, then come back and be with us as long as we live, and
throughout eternity. In Matthew 28:20 Christ says, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the
age." He will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

The fulfillment of Christ's promise came on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4). The Spirit came and
dwelt within the disciples, teaching them all about Christ, as John 14:26 says He would.

Christ was saying, "I'm going away to My Father, yet I'll come to you in the form of My Spirit to dwell
within you." That's a wonderful promise every believer has. There's no such thing as a Christian who
doesn't possess the indwelling Christ (Romans 8:9). Some people think they have to search for the
Holy Spirit, but He dwells in every believer. Paul said to the Corinthians, "Do you not know that you
are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16).

Spiritual Perception

Notice that the Spirit is called "the Spirit of truth" in John 14:17. Apart from Him, men cannot know or
understand truth. Jesus said, "The world cannot receive [the Spirit of truth], because it does not see
Him or know Him" (v. 17). When the academic minds of Jesus' day came to their conclusion about
who He was, their pronouncement was that He was from the devil (Matthew 12:24). They totally
ignored the hundreds of prophecies from their own Scriptures that Jesus fulfilled. Since the world
didn't recognize the first Comforter, Jesus, for who He was, you can't expect it to recognize the
second One, who is exactly like the first.

So Jesus told His disciples that when the Holy Spirit came, the world would not accept the message
any more than it did from Him. And He was right. In Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit came on the day of
Pentecost, the unbelievers who witnessed the miraculous manifestation thought the disciples were
drunk. The Holy Spirit was just as foreign to the stubborn, rejecting world as Jesus had been.

When I first studied John 14, I was puzzled about why in this context Jesus told the disciples that the
world in general would not respond to the Holy Spirit. Then I realized that with all the promises Jesus
was giving them, they might have succumbed to overconfidence. He told them they would do greater
things than even He had done (v. 12), and He promised to answer every prayer they asked (v. 14).
They might have been feeling invincible. If they proclaimed the gospel without knowing that the world
would not understand, they might have been crushed. So Jesus was tempering their enthusiasm.

An Eternal Union with God

In verse 17 Jesus says to His disciples, "But you know Him." They knew of the ministry of God's Spirit
from the Old Testament. In Old Testament times, we see the Holy Spirit coming upon certain people
for a specific service, and then departing after it was accomplished (cf. 1 Samuel 16:13-14; Ps.
51:11). At Jesus' baptism, the Spirit had descended on Him like a dove. So the disciples were not
ignorant of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

At the end of verse 17 Jesus says, "He abides with you and will be in you" (emphases added). From
now on the Holy Spirit would not just assist them but be in them. The Greek text suggests a
permanent, uninterrupted residence--something that never happened in Old Testament times. What
the Lord promised in Ezekiel 37:14 would come to pass: "I will put My Spirit within you and you will
come to life."

What a privilege it is that God in His grace plants His very essence in us! We have a supernatural
Helper, not just with but in every one of us who believes.

The Presence of Christ

Our Lord expands the promise in verses 18-19: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me." Jesus would die the next day,
so He wanted to reassure His disciples that they could nevertheless count on His presence after that.

He was guaranteeing that He would rise from the dead. His dying on the cross would not be the end
of His existence. But beyond that, He promised, "I will come to you." Indeed He sought out His
disciples after the resurrection, but the context implies He was speaking of something more: His
spiritual presence in every believer through the agency of the Holy Spirit.
That is the mystery of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit abides in us (v. 17), Christ indwells us (Colossians
1:27), and God is in us (1 John 4:12). That abiding presence is the source of eternal life. Jesus
added, "Because I live, you will live also" (v. 19).

Eternal life refers not just to quantity--to life that goes on forever--but more to quality. It's the kind of
life that makes you sensitive to what God is doing. The essence of spiritual life is walking with God,
sensing the Holy Spirit in your life, communing with Christ, and participating in the spiritual realm.

The Holy Spirit's ministry is to show us Christ. He assures us that Christ really exists. In John 16:15
Jesus says, "All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will
disclose it to you." When Jesus told the disciples to believe in Him just as they believed in the
invisible God, He said He would send the Holy Spirit, who would remind them of His presence. Any
ministry that centers on the Holy Spirit is dangerous because the Spirit's ministry is to point to Christ.

Full Understanding

Those who love Christ are not only indwelt by the Holy Spirit, Christ, and the Father, but also enjoy a
supernatural union with them. Jesus illustrated that union by comparing it with His relationship to the
Father: "In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you" (John 14:20).
We are one with God and Christ. That's why sin is so out of place in the believer's life.

At this point, the disciples still didn't understand the mystery of the relationship between the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit--let alone how they would be able to relate to all three. That's why Jesus
said, "In that day you will know," a reference to the day of Pentecost.

As soon as the disciples received the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, they began to understand. On the very
day that the Spirit of God came to dwell within him, Peter preached a powerful sermon clearly
delineating who Jesus Christ is, who the Father is, how they are related, why Jesus came, why He
died, why He rose, and what it all meant in reference to Israel.

The Manifestation of the Father

In John 14:21 Jesus says, "He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves
Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to
him." The Father loves anyone who loves His Son. That's not difficult to understand: I find I like
people who like my children. How much more must God, whose love is perfect, love those who love
His Son?

Jesus also promises to love us and to disclose Himself and the Father to us. I am sure all the
disciples were dumbfounded at that point. Judas--not Judas Iscariot, but the disciple who is also
called Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus--spoke out: "Lord, what then has happened that You are going to
disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?" (v. 22). Apparently he thought Jesus would physically
manifest Himself and the Father. He reasoned that if he and the other disciples could see Jesus,
everyone else should be able to as well. Furthermore, since Christ was to be the Savior of the world,
why would He not manifest Himself to the world?

Jesus answered, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will
come to him and make Our abode with him" (v. 23). Thaddaeus might not have been satisfied with
that answer; it sounds exactly like verse 21, which sounds exactly like verse 15. They all say the
same thing: "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments, and I will manifest Myself to you." We
begin to get the idea that this is an important concept.
The point Jesus was making to Thaddaeus is that He would manifest Himself in a spiritual sense. An
unsaved person doesn't have spiritual perception (1 Corinthians 2:12-14), so only those who love and
obey Christ can comprehend the manifestation He was talking about.

In verse 24 Jesus says, "He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you
hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me." How can He manifest Himself to someone who is
disobedient? People in the world don't want Christ. They don't want to obey His words. They don't
love Him. And since the words Jesus spoke came from the Father, the world doesn't want Him either.
He manifests Himself only to those who want Him. There's not a soul in the world who wants Jesus
Christ to the point of loving obedience who doesn't receive Him (cf. John 1:12-13).

A Supernatural Teacher

Jesus had spoken only the Father's words, but the disciples always had trouble understanding Him
during His earthly ministry. For example, John 12:16 says, "These things His disciples did not
understand at the first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were
written of Him, and that they had done these things to Him." In John 16:12 Jesus says, "I have many
more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."

Now He was turning over His teaching of the disciples to the Holy Spirit, who would dwell in them:
"These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I
said to you" (John 14:25-26). For three years Jesus had been teaching them the Father's truth, but
they never understood much. Now He would send a Teacher that would dwell within them.

Because of that wonderful promise, the disciples were later able to recall the precise words Jesus
had spoken to them. Once they recorded them as Scripture, those words would be perfect and error
free. In addition, the Spirit revealed new truth to them. Those whom God chose wrote it all down,
resulting in the Word of God as we have it today. To deny the accuracy or the integrity of the Bible is
to deny this crucial aspect of the Spirit's ministry.

The Holy Spirit's main role to us is that of teacher. Verse 26 says that the Spirit teaches "all things."
That does not mean He imparts to us some kind of omniscience. "All things" is used here in a relative
sense. It speaks of "all things that pertain to life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3, New King James
Version).

How does the promise that the Holy Spirit will instruct us and bring all things to our memory apply
today? The Spirit guides us in our pursuit of truth through the Word of God. He teaches us by
convicting us of sin, affirming truth in our hearts, and opening our understanding to the depth of
God's revealed truth. As you've probably experienced many times, He often brings to mind
appropriate verses and truths from Scripture at just the night moment.

First John 2:27 says, "The anointing which you have received from Him [Christ] abides in you...as His
anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you
abide in Him." Why does a Christian continue in Christ and not follow after cults and false doctrine?
Because of the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. God has so endowed the Christian with
discernment that he ultimately will not be deceived by lies. He may become confused at times, but he
will always abide in Christ.

Verse 27 speaks of the anointing that the believer "received"--past tense. You received the Spirit
when you were saved, and He continues to abide in you. The Spirit never leaves any Christian; the
true believer will never depart from the faith. If one ever did, the Holy Spirit would have failed in His
teaching ministry.
 The Power of the Spirit in You

Prior to receiving the Holy Spirit, the apostles were powerless to carry out Christ's unfinished work.
So in Acts 1:8 Jesus promised, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you."
The Greek word translated "power" (dunamis) is the source of the English word dynamite. Every
Christian is packed with power--the Holy Spirit.

Some Christians feel they are lacking in power. If you feel that way, it's not God's fault. The power is
within you--all you need to do is turn on the ignition switch!

Ephesians 5:18 says to "be filled with the Spirit." To live a Spirit-filled life means to yield yourself to
the control of the Spirit. The way to do that is to "let the word of Christ richly dwell within you"
(Colossians 3:16). Being filled with the Spirit and letting the Word dwell in you are synonymous
because they produce the same results: a song in your heart, a thankful attitude, and loving
relationships at home and at work (Ephesians 5:19--6:9; Colossians 3:16--4:1).

To let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly is to be preoccupied with the presence of Christ. The
more you saturate your mind with what you learn about Him from the Bible, the more He controls
your thoughts. By yielding yourself totally to the Word of God and letting it permeate your life, you'll
be controlled by the Spirit's desires.

God can do great things through you. Ephesians 3:20 says He "is able to do far more abundantly
beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us." The power is in you; it
just needs to be released. That happens when you yield every aspect of your life to the Spirit's
control.

Conclusion

Nothing can take the place of the Holy Spirit's work in the life of the believer. Through Him we are
"heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:17). We are infinitely richer than all the
billionaires of the world put together because what we possess is an eternal inheritance.

Paul, quoting the prophet Isaiah, wrote, "Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and
which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him" (1
Corinthians 2:9). Christians are rich beyond imagination. And the greatest resource of all--the Holy
Spirit--dwells in us and is with us forever.
 The Essential Ministry of the Holy Spirit, Part 1
Selected Scriptures

Now we want to talk a little bit about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and I don't want to get bogged
down and spend weeks and weeks and weeks defining every facet of the Spirit's ministry, but to
basically look at what is important and critical and revealed in Scripture instructive for us and effective
and necessary for our spiritual lives with regard to the Spirit of God. We have to assume a few things
and one is that we're going to assume that you understand that the Holy Spirit is God. In fact, in
Hebrews 9:14 He is referred to as the eternal Spirit. And so that in itself affirms that He is God who is
eternal and who alone is eternal. Genesis 1:2 tells us that He was the one who moved across the
formless deep and brought form to it. Therefore He is the Creator.

Scripture also tells us that He is the divine agent by which by whom the scriptures were written, holy
men wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. There are Trinitarian passages in the Scripture,
such as the baptism of Christ where you have the Spirit descending as a dove, you have the Father
speaking out of heaven, and you have the Son present. And so God is not just one God who
appears in three different persons at various times, He is at all times three, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. We understand then that when we talk about the Holy Spirit, we're talking about God...God,
the third person of the Trinity, fully God, worthy of praise, worthy of worship, worthy of all that we
render to Christ and all that we render to God the Father.

We're going to leave that as the foundation, that we understand that the Holy Spirit is in fact as He is
so designated in Scripture the Spirit of God, just as Jesus is the Son of God. But I want us to look
based on that assumption of what His divine ministry is. How He works to accomplish the purposes
of God. Eternity past when the Father and the Son agreed on the unfolding glorious work of
redemption, the Father determining to create a world and out of that world to call into eternal glory a
redeemed humanity as a love gift to His Son...the Son responds by being willing to receive that gift
and to be incarnate in this world and therefore pay the price necessary to purchase that gift, the price
of redemption on the cross.

And so we think about that pledge between the Father and the Son that sets all of redemptive history
in motion, but it's important to affirm as well that the Holy Spirit agrees in all of that and becomes the
one who makes application of that plan. It is the Spirit, for example, who comes upon Mary and she
is given a child without a human father. It is the Spirit who fills the Lord Jesus and who works
through Him so that to deny the power of Jesus was to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit in
the Father's will who raises Him from the dead. It is the Spirit who comes down and establishes the
church. It is the Spirit who regenerates every believer. It is the Spirit who has given, as I said, full
revelation of God so that all we know about God and all we know about redemptive history, and all
we know about salvation is the product of the Holy Spirit.

So we're talking when we talk about the Holy Spirit of God the very God, as the ancients used to call
Him. He is equal to God in every...to God the Father in every sense, equal to God the Son in every
sense, and in no sense is He less than equal. And yet certainly He does not get equal consideration
and that would be perhaps more true in this particular climate than it has been, at least in my life, in
the past. I remember when I began to do ministry as a college student and speak here and there at
youth conventions and places like that, almost everyone wanted me to speak on the ministry of the
Holy Spirit. Everywhere I went I was asked to speak on what it means to be filled with the Spirit, what
it means to walk in the Spirit, what it means to be sealed by the Spirit, what it means to be indwelt by
the Spirit of God, what it means to be taught by the Spirit, what it means when the Bible says I'll bring
all things to your remembrance through the Spirit, the Spirit of truth. This was a major emphasis.
Many books were written about the Holy Spirit, on the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I would say that it
was probably the ministry of the Holy Spirit that was the dominant theme in those early years of my
ministry. There was a lot less being said about the person and work of Jesus Christ, there were
some things that were sort of standard givens, very little was being said about the doctrine of
justification, substitution, imputation, which is very popular in evangelical circles today. And frankly
not a lot was being said about God and the character of God and the nature of God. If you wanted to
find a book like that, you pretty much had to go back to Puritan literature and find Stephen Charnak's
Existence and Attributes of God, or some old book on God, until A.W. Tozer's little book began to
gain public interest, The Knowledge of the Holy, and then J. I. Packer's very impactful book, Knowing
God arrived on the scene in the early years of my ministry and people began to their focus toward
God. And little by little the interest in the Holy Spirit diminished and the interest in the Holy Spirit
among evangelicals began to diminish in direct proportion to the ascendency of the Charismatic
Movement.

As the Charismatic increasingly kidnapped the Holy Spirit and held Him hostage to their aberrant
theology, interest in the Holy Spirit began to wane among other evangelicals who didn't want to start
a fight with the Charismatic. So there was a certain setting aside of the ministry of the Holy Spirit for
the sake of unity because if we are going to teach a biblical doctrine of the Holy Spirit, it's going to be
an all-out attack on aberrant teaching concerning the Holy Spirit which is essentially rife in that
movement. And so, little by little discussion, meaningful discussion, helpful, direct, accurate, precise,
biblical presentations of the person and work of the Holy Spirit began to disappear.

After the Charismatic Movement had done its work of sort of co-opting the Holy Spirit for its own
definitions, along came the Pragmatic Movement. And pragmatism basically said we can do the work
of the church, we can do the work of the ministry through human means. If we just figure out sound
marketing strategy, we can win people to Christ. If we figure out how to effectively present the
message and approach people on the basis of their felt need, we can convince them by our
technique and by our style to embrace the gospel. If we can figure out the psychological keys to
people, if we can find out what makes them tick, if we can define them psychologically and know
where their points of psychological contact really are, then we'll be able to reach them. And so as the
church moved from the Charismatic Movement to the Psychological Movement and into the
Pragmatic Movement, interest in the Holy Spirit continued to diminish and diminish and diminish until
here we are today and it is a very rare thing to hear a message on the person of the Holy Spirit or the
ministry of the Holy Spirit.

On the one hand we're reluctant to teach the truth as over against the error that's so popular about
the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, we aren't really sure that the Holy Spirit is that critical about
everything because we're so good at what we do in terms of marketing and strategies and we have
figured out people so well with our psychological analysis that we know basically how to get to them
and maybe the Holy Spirit's ministry isn't as critical as it once was. In addition to that, we've got so
many resources, we have so many books and tapes and CDs and seminars and opportunities for
people to get the information that they need and digest and process that information and we have so
many ministries, endless ministries, so many teachers on radio, and television, and so many authors
proliferating the landscape that there's certainly enough out there for people to absorb. And we
wouldn't say it but it makes the Holy Spirit a little less critical.

Well something like that was going on in Galatian thinking, in the churches in Galatia and Paul
addressed it. Turn to Galatians chapter 3, a little different approach but the same idea. They too
were diminishing the place of the Holy Spirit. Chapter 3 of Galatians, and I don't want to take the
time to develop the whole argument here, but we'll read the first three verses and make a couple of
comments just to set the context. "You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whose eyes
Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?" This is the only thing I want to find out from you,
it's down to this, 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?

The Galatians, like all other believers, began their Christian lives in the power of the Spirit. That's
how they began. But they were coming under the influence of Judaizing teachers that would be Jews
who would affirm the gospel and the Lord Jesus Christ, but also would add the necessity of
circumcision, literal physical circumcision, and obedience to the Mosaic Law as a necessity for
salvation so that they are essentially asking people to be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ and then to
live their lives if their salvation is to be legitimate, following Mosaic ceremonies, circumcision, and
Mosaic Law. The gospel of grace then disappears and in its place a system of human effort.

Paul calls this being bewitched...bewitched describes their condition, baskaino is the Greek verb. It
means to fascinate. It means to charm in a misleading way. Who has charmed you away from
reality? Who has charmed you away from the truth? They had become willing victims, succumbing
to a flesh-pleasing kind of spirituality. They received the Holy Spirit by faith. They began the
Christian life by faith. Is it going to be perfected by flesh? Is it going to be perfected by fleshly
methods, by circumcision and the keeping of the Law and ceremonies? Paul's point is pretty simple.
If a person receives eternal salvation through trust in Christ who is publicly displayed as crucified,
verse 1, and at that point by believing in the crucified Christ has received the fullness of the
indwelling Holy Spirit as all believers do at the point of salvation, and if with the Spirit taking up
residence in that believer's life, the power of God is therefore placed at that believer's disposal, why
would anyone turn to human effort to achieve spiritual goals? The Holy Spirit is the Christian's
source of life and power. The Holy Spirit is to the Christian what the Creator is to the creation.
Without God the Creator, the world does not come into existence. Without God as the sustainer, it
does not continue in existence. It is God who created it and God who sustains it. And so it is with
the Holy Spirit and the Christian. Without the Holy Spirit we wouldn't be the new creation. Without
the Holy Spirit we wouldn't be born again, we wouldn't be regenerated. And without the Holy Spirit
we would not continue to be constantly being sanctified by divine power. We would immediately,
apart from the Holy Spirit, fall back into spiritual deadness from which we came. The creation cannot
continue, it cannot survive without the upholding power of God the Creator, and neither can a
Christian sustain that Christian life by works or by ceremony or by religious rite or ritual, it can only be
sustained by the Holy Spirit. Were it not sustained by the Holy Spirit, I say it again, we would drop
right back into spiritual deadness. We live in the Spirit. We are being kept by the Spirit. He is the
source of our life. He is the sphere of our spiritual existence. No one is saved without the Spirit or
sanctified without the Spirit. We cannot minister in the flesh, we minister effectively and only in the
Spirit.

So why...he says to the Galatians...would you begin understanding the power of the Spirit that saved
you, and then turn from the work of the Spirit by grace in your heart backwards to those things which
you left, those outward external fleshly shadowy symbolic elements. Why begin in the power of the
Spirit and try to perfect what was begun in the flesh?...in the flesh?

I have the feeling that the evangelical church today that certainly would claim to have begun in the
power of the Spirit at salvation has now tried to perfect itself in the flesh. This massive movement
called the Charismatic Movement ascribes itself to the Holy Spirit but it is far more a work of the flesh
than it is the work of the Spirit because the Spirit of God does not invest convincing expressions of
His power into aberrant theology. The Spirit of God doesn't do that. If there were a gift of healing, it
wouldn't belong to a heretic. God doesn't verify heretics. It wouldn't belong to a false teacher. It
wouldn't belong to a charlatan. It wouldn't belong to a fraud. It wouldn't belong to somebody getting
rich at the expense of sick people. If God gave those kinds of abilities to do miracles, He wouldn't
give them to people who want to take your money and run. He wouldn't give them to scam artists.
He wouldn't give them to those who teach wrongly about the work of the Holy Spirit. God does not
validate and verify error.

But we've backed away as if people in that movement are the only ones who have a right to affirm
certain things about the Holy Spirit, and it's time without necessarily focusing only on that movement
to say we need to go back and understand what the Bible says about the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Now if you want to know more about that specific movement, I have written a book called Charismatic
Chaos, it still speaks to that issue clearly on the subjects that are necessary. But it isn't just that. As
I mentioned a little while ago, we've become very good at what we do, very crafty at what we do in
the church, very skilled at our style and technique, very good at developing music that attracts a
crowd, very good at assessing people's psychological felt needs. We've become very adept at
marketing strategies so that we can sell millions upon millions of books when we figure out the
strategy that's going to work in a given market and a given culture. We're good at that kind of stuff.
And that's a big head trip. And when many numbers of people respond to that, it gives the illusion of
spiritual success and it may have absolutely nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. Very little talk about
the work of the Holy Spirit today, very little interest in the filling of the Holy Spirit, very little interest in
walking in the Spirit.

And as I said, in the early years of my ministry, everywhere I went this was the main issue to talk
about. I had a period of about two and a half, almost three years just before I came to Grace Church,
way back in the sixties, when I was traveling around preaching about 35 times a month...about 35
times a month. I did that for about two and a half years, almost three years. And I was speaking
mostly to youth groups here and there. And in variably everywhere I went they wanted me to talk
about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That was just what everybody was interested in. That was
before things got so confusing with the development of the Charismatic and the Pragmatic and the
Psychological Movement.

This is to dishonor the Holy Spirit, of course, and we need to go back and give to the Holy Spirit the
honor that He is due as God. You cannot set Him aside without bringing dishonor upon God for He is
God. So what are we going to learn about the Holy Spirit? Let me give you some things to think
about, just a little bit of a list, okay? We're going to kind of work our way through this list.

Before I do that, just one other comment or two. I really believe that this is a sin in the life of the
church to diminish and depreciate the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is a serious sin. It is a sin to think
that we can do what only the Holy Spirit can do, that we can by our cleverness convert people.
Plagianism, if you will, is a sin, that is to believe that people are saved by their own will and all we
have to do is manipulate their will. It is a sin against the Holy Spirit. It is a sin to think that we can
win people to Christ by our techniques. It is a kind of usurping of the role of the Holy Spirit. It is a
kind of blasphemy, if you will. It's a kind of profanity, really. And we know that the Holy Spirit always
works His work through the Word, and you cannot honor the Spirit without honoring the Word...for the
Spirit is the author of the Word.

It comes down to the fact that the church has lost its interest in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, feeling
that perhaps it can do things better. And I'm deeply concerned. And I think the Spirit is quenched
and grieved over this. So let's talk about the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

First of all, we have to start where we have to start, and that is that the Holy Spirit is the agent of
salvation...the Holy Spirit is the agent of salvation. I don't know if I'll get past this, that's okay. What
do we mean by that? Let's begin by looking at John 16....John 16.

And I want you to know that there's so much in the Scripture about the Holy Spirit that we could
never do an exhaustive study of this in a few Sunday nights. We're not attempting to do that, rather
to give you an overview. This is Holy Spirit, class 101. This is not the advanced study of the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit. If you want the advanced and more extensive study, you can go to the book store
or the library and you can dig tomes out of the shelves that will expand on the marvellous breadth of
biblical revelation concerning the Holy Spirit. But there are some things that are so foundational
regarding the ministry of the Holy Spirit that we need to understand them and understand them well.

In John chapter 16, the Lord Jesus is promising to send the Holy Spirit. He has been saying that.
He says it in chapter 14, He says it in chapter 15 and He says it again in chapter 16. Look at verse
7. "If I do not go away," the middle of the verse...the helper, the paraclete, the one who comes
alongside, the Holy Spirit who has been so designated in the earlier mention in chapter 15 and verse
26 and back in chapter 14 verse 26, the Advocate, the Helper, Paraclete, the Comforter. "If I do not
go away, the Helper shall not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you and He, when He
comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin,
because they do not believe in Me, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you no
longer behold Me. And concerning judgment because the ruler of this world has been judged." Now
we'll stop there for the moment, anyway.
 What is this ministry of the Holy Spirit? Convicting the world...convicting the world. That is, bringing
upon the heart and soul of unredeemed humanity, the awareness of sin. He does a convicting work.
He convicts of sin, first of all, because they do not believe in Me and that is THE sin that damns.
Finally and ultimately, no other sin finally and ultimately will damn you but that one. Those who go to
hell go to hell because they do not believe in Christ. Any other sin is forgiven when one does believe
in Christ. So this is that ultimate damning sin, rejection of Jesus Christ. The Spirit then convicts, the
Spirit works in the heart to produce guilt and fear and anxiety and trepidation and terror and the
reality of sin.

And then secondly, righteousness, "Because I go to the Father and you no longer behold Me." What
does that mean? It means the Spirit convicts the sinner not only of his own sin, but the Spirit convicts
the sinner of the righteousness of Jesus Christ who is utterly unlike the sinner and that is why the
Father received Him at the right hand. He went to His Father and His Father received Him and sat
Him at His right hand because of His perfect righteousness. It is the Spirit of God then who works
those great realities in the human heart..the reality of the sin of the sinner and the righteousness of
the Savior.

And the Spirit also produces in the heart conviction concerning judgment, that sin will be judged
because the ruler of this world has been judged. As Christ bruised the serpent's head at the cross,
as Christ crushed His enemy as the seed of the woman of Genesis 3:15 destroys the enemies of our
souls, we see the judgment power of Christ displayed and all who are part of Satan's domain will
experience that same judgment. Those are the things that the Spirit of God wants to produce in the
heart by way of a conviction...conviction of sin because people don't believe in Christ, conviction of
the absolute perfect righteousness of Christ who has therefore satisfied God with a sufficient
atonement and propitiation and entered into heaven and seating...and being seated at His right hand,
and of the reality of judgment upon those who remain a part of Satan's domain. Since those are the
areas which the Holy Spirit works to convict sinners, then those should be the areas which we
proclaim, right? The Holy Spirit doesn't do this work in a vacuum. As we preach sin and
righteousness and judgment, we provide the necessary truth for the Spirit of God to work His great
work. Admittedly, preaching sin is not popular, it's not what people want to hear, but it is absolutely
necessary. Preaching the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ and the fact that His sacrifice is
there...is therefore a perfect satisfaction to the holy law of God and the perfect...a perfect offering to
satisfy His holy wrath, He then receives Christ to His right hand. And so we are preaching here the
great doctrine of substitution, the great doctrines of propitiation. And, of course, we preach
judgment. And that means the judgment of the prince of this world and all who are a part of his
kingdom of darkness, we preach eternal judgment, eternal hell, eternal wrath, eternal retribution.

The Spirit of God works to produce these things. The Spirit of God needs the Word to be proclaimed
in these categories in order to do His work. And there are literally all throughout the pages of
Scripture, all throughout the pages of Scripture, these truths over and over again rehearsed...in the
Old Testament by way of prophecy and type and symbol, and all throughout the New Testament.
Listen to 1 Thessalonians 1:5, "Our gospel did not come to you in Word only, but in power and in the
Holy Spirit and with full conviction." When you preach the gospel in the power of the Spirit, He
produces conviction. If I want to evangelize somebody, if I want to preach a message that really can
change people's hearts, the first thing I have to understand is I can't do that...I can't do that on my
own. There's only one who transforms people and that's the Holy Spirit. So I want to ask the
question, what is it that the Spirit of God does, what is it that the Spirit of God uses to begin the work
of conviction? And it is the truth about sin and the truth about Christ and the cross and the truth
about judgment.

Secondly, if we're going to begin at the beginning, we have to understand that it is the Holy Spirit who
produces conviction when the truth is proclaimed and heard and understood. It is also the Holy Spirit
who produces repentance. It is also the Holy Spirit who produces repentance. In fact, I'm confident
that's precisely what we have in the eleventh chapter of Acts in the eighteenth verse. "When they
heard this, they quieted down and glorified God saying, 'Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles
also the repentance that leads to life.'"
And how did this come about? The preaching mentioned earlier in verses...prior verses. And then in
verse 15 the Holy Spirit fell upon them, just as He did on us at the beginning. Verse 17, God gave to
them the same gift that He gave to us, also after believing in the Lord Jesus because the same Spirit
who came upon us is the Spirit who came upon them who had prior to that granted them repentance.
The Spirit produces conviction about sin, conviction about the truth of the cross which is related to sin
and our sinfulness and the only hope we have to escape judgment, and the Spirit produces
conviction about judgment in order to produce repentance.

And, of course, we can add to that, look at 1 Peter 1:12...1 Peter 1:12. The Spirit energizes the
gospel, and these are just different ways at looking at the same dynamic work of the Spirit, but 1
Peter 1 it says, "It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you in these
things...speaking about the Old Testament prophets...in these things which now they have
announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from
heaven." The gospel when it is truly preached is preached by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

Why do we say that? Are we talking about some mystical power? Well we're talking certainly about
the divine power of the Holy Spirit. We're also talking about the gospel which has been given to us
by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So the Spirit who is the author of the gospel is also the
Energizer, those who preach the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Again the
indication here is the Holy Spirit is the Energizer of gospel preaching. First John 5 says, "The Spirit
who bears witness because the Spirit is the truth." Whatever is a representation of the truth of
Scripture comes from the Holy Spirit and is therefore the witness of the Spirit, it is further energized
by the Spirit.

Go back to John chapter 3, and we're just touching on these things ever so briefly in order to keep
moving a little bit. But in John chapter 3 it all kind of comes together here where Jesus has His
conversation with Nicodemus. "How can a man be born when he is old?" talking about the new birth,
talking about how to get into the Kingdom of God, necessary to be born again. And then in verse 5,
"Truly, truly...Jesus says...I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is
Spirit." The point here is the Spirit regenerates. So the Spirit convicts of sin, righteousness and
judgment. The Spirit reduces repentance by means of that conviction. The Spirit energizes gospel
preaching. And the Spirit then regenerates. If there is regeneration, it is because the Spirit has done
that, the Spirit gives life. That's why we're talking about being born of the Spirit.

In Titus chapter 3 it says in verse 5, "He saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in
righteousness, but according to His mercy by the washing of regeneration and the renewing by the
Holy Spirit." It's the Spirit that renews and regenerates. Those are almost synonyms in that
passage.

So the whole work of salvation then is a work of the Spirit of God. He's the author of Scripture which
is the source of truth about sin, righteousness and judgment. He is the author of Scripture which is
the call to repentance. He is the author of Scripture which is gospel truth. It is He who then through
the proclamation of the Scripture convicts, produces repentance, energizes gospel preaching and
witness and regenerates, gives new life.

Now that is not all that the Holy Spirit does, but that's the initial work. And there are a lot of ways to
see that in the general flow of New Testament teaching. Let me just give you a couple of
illustrations. Look at 2 Thessalonians 2:13 and here we get a little broader look at this initial ministry
of the Holy Spirit...2 Thessalonians 2:13, "We should always give thanks to God for you, brethren,
beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through
sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth." We're not talking about progressive sanctification
here, we're talking about the sanctification here that is synonymous with salvation. And sanctification
often is synonymous with salvation. The word sanctification means to be set apart, it means to be
cleansed, it means to be separated. That's what salvation is, we are separated from sin, we are
separated from iniquity, we're separated from condemnation, we're separated from the kingdom of
darkness into the Kingdom of God's dear Son. So initial salvation is a launch of sanctification, it is a
separation. And that's what we're talking about here because he says, "For salvation through
sanctification." It is this kind of sanctification that saves you and it is by the Spirit and faith in the
truth. It happens in that perfect combination of believing the truth when proclaimed and experiencing
the glorious power of the Holy Spirit. He sets us apart to God. This is another way of saying
everything I've already said, that He convicts and He causes repentance and that He gives the
gospel power and He regenerates...just another way to say the same thing.

There are many other things that the Holy Spirit does but everything starts with His mighty work of
salvation. So that...going back to our text in Galatians chapter 3, you don't need to turn to it, just
listen...Paul says, "Having begun in the Spirit are you now perfected by the flesh?" We know we
began in the Spirit, it all started with the work of the Spirit. And we needed to be reminded again the
fact that any evangelism that bypasses the agencies which the Spirit uses, that is the biblical
revelation about sin, righteousness, judgment, the biblical truth about repentance, the biblical truth
about the gospel and we talked a little bit about that this morning and what's involved in a true and
appropriate presentation of the gospel, and the biblical truth about regeneration and that it's not
something the sinner can do for himself but it's something that only God can do and all the sinner can
do is cry out to God and beg God to do that on his behalf, when we preach that kind of message,
then we preach the truth which the Spirit of God applies.

Having begun in the Spirit, can we then be perfected by the activity of our flesh? That's the question
Paul is asking and while it relates to the specific issue going on there, are you going to go off now
into some fleshly form of living, some external ritualistic ceremonial kind of living and assume that's a
necessity to hang on to your salvation and to progress with God? If you do, then you're forsaking the
Spirit with whom you began and you're now living in the flesh. And this is a kind of bewitching. We
need to continue in the Spirit now that we have begun in the Spirit, we need to continue in the Spirit.

What does that mean? Let me give you a few things to start and I probably have about...oh, I could
give you 15 or 20 things the Spirit does but we'll see how many I finally kind of boil it down to. But
there are a couple of things that we need to start with here, okay?

Number one, He brings us the knowledge of and communion with God. He brings us the
knowledge of and communion with God. The Spirit is the one who gives us access into fellowship
with God. He is the source of all our communion, all our fellowship. Turn to Romans 8...Romans 8,
there's a couple of passages that say this and they'll be good enough to suffice for the moment to
make the point. But in Romans chapter 8, this is the chapter on life in the Spirit and I would suggest
to you that you couldn't study anything better than this entire eighth chapter to find out what it means
to live in the Spirit. And we looked at it a little bit earlier in our doctrinal study when we were talking
about the doctrine of sanctification. But it's about the Spirit. Verse 9, for example...well, we can go
back to verse...you can go all the way back to the beginning of the chapter, but let's go back to verse
6, "The mind set on the flesh is death, the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace." Verse 9, "You are
not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you." Verse 11, "If the Spirit of
Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will
also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you." Verse 13, "If you're living
according to the flesh, you must die. But if by the Spirit you're putting to death the deeds of the body,
you will live. All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." So we're talking
about life in the Spirit here clearly...clearly.

We begin in the Spirit and we live in the Spirit. We go on living in the Spirit, not according to the
flesh. But just look down to verse 14, and we'll pick out one of the elements of this that it should be a
treasure to us all. "All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." When you
experience the direct leading of the Spirit of God in your life, it is an affirmation that you belong to
God as a true son. "For you have not received a spirit of slavery, a spirit or an attitude of slavery
leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out Abba,
Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God."
 Now this is a marvelous reality in our lives. We literally say Abba, Father. That's a...basically it's a
diminutive for papa, daddy, signifying endearment, intimacy. It's like the writer of Hebrews saying,
"Let us draw near," or James, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." This is an immense
privilege to call God daddy, papa. And we do that by the Spirit. The Spirit frees us from fear, frees
us from dread, frees us from terror that one might have in one's heart in approaching God an all holy,
glorious God. And we come into God's presence as children and we come eagerly and we run into
His presence and we speak to Him intimately and we unload our issues and our desires and our
prayers and our petitions and our praise and we say papa, and daddy, and that's the work of the
Spirit.

When one has been born again, the Spirit of God produces that attitude in the heart of a believer.
We feel drawn to God, not fearful of Him. We feel privileged to ask Him for anything and the Spirit of
God gives us that internal freedom. The Spirit of God has revealed in the Scripture as the divine
means by which the Scripture has come to us all these things that are true about our relationship but
I don't think it's just talking about information, I think it's talking about a spirit or an attitude. That's
verse 14. If you're led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God, you have not received a spirit of
slavery. That's gone. You hear people talk about being converted and the burden being lifted. You
hear people talk about never wanting to pray, having no knowledge of God, no interest in God. All of
a sudden they're converted to Jesus Christ and they're eager to pray and they're eager to read the
Word and they love to commune and they want to sing praises. And they sense that God is open.
There is a true joy of fellowship because access has been opened. We can even cast all our care on
Him because we know He cares for us. We can unload every issue in our lives. We can be honest
with Him about our sins. We don't have to hide them from Him. We can be honest with Him about
our sins, we should be honest with Him about our sins. We should confess them all before Him
without fear knowing that they are all covered by His grace through the sacrifice of Christ.

So the Spirit then opens to us communion with God. And as you grow as a believer, this joyous
communion, this joyous prayer and praise takes over more and more of your life and there's a
wonderful freeness in that. We sing hymns about God's holiness. We sing hymns about God's
glory. We sing them with a smile. We sing them with joy in our hearts. We sing them with gladness.
We come before the Lord, as the psalmist said, with singing. We're a truly happy people. We're
without fear because of the work of the Holy Spirit.

There's a second ministry of the Holy Spirit that I'll talk to you tonight, and I'll just cover this one
briefly, leave the rest for next time. He illuminates the Scripture...He illuminates the Scripture. We
just wrapped up our little look at the doctrine of Scripture and the doctrine of the inspiration of
Scripture. And you can build a little bridge in your mind to this particular function of the Holy Spirit,
He illuminates Scripture. As I mentioned earlier, according to the words of Peter in 2 Peter 1, "No
prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. No prophecy was ever made by an act
of human will, men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." That tells us the Holy Spirit is the
author of Scripture. But He's not just the author of Scripture, He is the illuminator of Scripture...the
illuminator of Scripture.

First John 2, look at it for a minute...1 John 2. I'll give you a couple of passages to look at. First
John chapter 2 and verse 20, "You have an anointing from the Holy One, you have an anointing from
the Holy One and you all know," or some versions say you know all. What is this anointing? Well it's
none other than the Holy Spirit who is the source of our understanding of Scripture. Down to verse
27, if you will, "As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you." Now we know
we're talking about the Holy Spirit. We've received Him from the Lord and He abides in us. "And you
have no need for anyone to teach you." We don't need any human philosophy, human wisdom,
human teachers. It doesn't mean we don't need Spirit-filled teacher, it doesn't mean we don't need
believing teachers because the Lord has given to the church evangelists and teachers,
pastor/teachers, with teaching of Scripture. But we don't have any need for anyone other than those
who are the means by which the Spirit teaches us the Word because as His anointing teaches you
about all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him. He in us
and we in Him. The Spirit lives in us and we live in the Spirit. We live and move and have our being
in the realm of the Holy Spirit. We literally possess the life of the Spirit and the Spirit lives in us. This
is a marvelous thing. And the ministry of the Spirit therefore, this anointing, this gift from God, this
deposit placed upon us, is our teacher, the one who opens to us an understanding of divine truth.
The Word anointing here is the word chrisma, it means ointment, something placed on us like an
anointing oil. And it is the Spirit of Truth. As I said, in John 14, John 15, John 16, the Spirit of Truth
comes to lead us into all truth, to guide us to see the glories of Christ. We'll see more about that
later. All this is referring, of course, to the Holy Spirit.

But for the passage that's most critical on this, turn to 1 Corinthians 2 and we'll finish up here...just
five minutes or so. First Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 9. Now verse 9 borrows from a couple of
passages in Isaiah, "Just as it is written, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard." All
right, this would be truth not available to empirical search. It's not available to empirical search.
Secondly, "And which have not entered the heart of man." It's not available through intuition. You
can't find it externally and you can't find it internally. "But it's truth about all that God has prepared for
those who love Him." Everything that God has for those who are His children is unavailable in terms
of understanding to the unregenerate. It's not available to them. You can't find it externally by
scholastic effort. You can't find it internally by intuition. Verse 10, "For to us God revealed them,"
that is these things that He's prepared for them that love Him, "through the Spirit." God revealed
them through the Spirit. "For the Spirit searches all things even the depths of God." That is to say
that the Spirit knows everything the mind of God knows for the Spirit is God. To us, God revealed
them through the Spirit. The Spirit again is the agency by which all that God knows and wants to
dispense to us is provided.

And He gives a little analogy. "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of
the man which is in him. Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God." If
you want to know the thoughts of God, then God's going to have to determine to reveal those
thoughts to you and He has done that through His Spirit. "So we have received...verse 12...not the
spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might know the things freely given to us by
God." All these wonderful things which you can't find by external academic search, you can't find by
internal intuition, all these things that God has prepared for those that love Him are unavailable to
anyone apart from those who are taught by the Holy Spirit. "And we, verse 12, have received the
Spirit." So we have an internal resident truth teacher who illuminates us. This is part of the doctrine
of illumination. Inspiration brings us the message. Illumination is the work of the Spirit which gives
us an understanding of what the message means. The Spirit illuminated us to understand our
sinfulness. The Spirit illuminated us to understand the gospel. The Spirit illuminated us from the very
beginning and continues this work of shining the light of truth brightly in our minds.

So, says Paul, verse 13, "Which things we also speak. So we speak the things which the Spirit has
disclosed to us, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining
spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. A natural man doesn't accept the things of the Spirit of God,
they're foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they're spiritually appraised."

I received a phone call a few months ago from the History channel. And the History channel keeps
doing all of these religious documentaries about Jesus and the New Testament and the Old
Testament, and the Bible, and you've seen some of them. And they said, "We would like for you to
be one of our regular experts on the Bible. Would you be interested?" And my reply was,
"Absolutely not...absolutely not, because there's no concord between Christ and Belial. There's no
fellowship between light and darkness." You can't have a whole list of people denying what the Bible
says and I understand their denial of it because they're explained right here, they are natural men
who do not accept the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him. He can't understand
them because they're spiritually appraised. He's spiritually dead. So he comes up with some
intellectual answer or some intuitional answer which is not anywhere near the truth and why would I
get aboard that ship of fools? I don't need...I don't need to be just another voice in the cacophony,
particularly when it would be my tendency to say, "Well you're all wrong and I know exactly what the
truth is." I would last about one program, I think. They would have edited me down to nothing. And
it's not because I'm brighter than them, I'm not. It's not because I'm more school than them, I'm not.
It is because I have the resident truth teacher in me who illuminates the Word when I diligently apply
myself to understand it. And the marvelous thing of all is in verse 16, "Who has known the mind of
the Lord that He should instruct him?" Who knows the mind of the Lord but the Spirit of the Lord,
that's the implication. And we have the mind of Christ.

It's an amazing thing to realize that we expect...I expect unregenerate people to botch Bible
interpretation. I expect them to misunderstand the Old Testament and the New Testament. I've sat
down with some rabbis, some very fine gentlemen, some very bright, articulate, far brighter than I and
more articulate than I am, who don't get any of it in the Old Testament. They don't get it at all. And I
understand that. I have read and interacted with New Testament quote/unquote students and
scholars who don't get it at all. And I get it not because I'm smarter, but I get it because I'm like you, I
have the teacher...I have resident in me the One who wrote the Scripture and who interprets it. And I
know that sometimes you think that I come up with things that are just...you just can't find them. I
even have...I had somebody ask me a week ago, "Where in the world do you get this stuff? I come
every week and you come up with stuff and I never see that in the text." I just want you to know,
there's no secret. As I told a young pastor many years ago who said to me, "What's the secret to
great preaching?" I said, "Accurate interpretation of the text."

"How do you do that?"

"Keep your rear end in the chair till you've understood what it means." You have the promise of the
truth teacher, but it's not going to happen in a vacuum of ignorance. You've got to apply yourself.
You know what being a pastor really is? It's just being freed up to work hard enough to bring to you
what you don't have the time to find, or perhaps the training. Maybe I'm justifying the necessity of my
existence, but...(laughter)...what can I say? You're here and you're listening. That's a good thing.
But it's so wonderful to come out of hours and hours of study every week and say, "I know what this
means...I know what this means, the illuminating work of the Spirit of God has made it clear. It
means this..." And what Paul is saying here is, "No one know the person but the spirit of that
person." And that's true in the divine sense by analogy. No one really knows the mind of God but the
Spirit of God, and aren't we grateful that the Spirit of God wrote the truth here so that we have the
true representation of the mind of God and the mind of Christ?" And then the Spirit's taken up
residence in us to illuminate that truth to us.

Well that's two out of ten. We'll cover some more next week.

Father, again what a wonderful day to be together and we want to honor You, Holy Spirit. There's
no reason we can't pray to You and praise You and thank You, blessed Spirit, for saving us, for
convicting us of sin, righteousness and judgment. We thank You, Holy Spirit for producing in us
repentance. We thank You for quickening and making the gospel live and penetrate in all its
winsomeness. We thank You for regenerating us, giving us life so we can apprehend the glorious
truth of the gospel. We thank You for sanctifying us. We thank You for giving us intimate knowledge
of God. And we thank You for ushering us into His presence in which we enjoy fellowship in the
sweetness of prayer and praise. We thank You for opening the Word to us, though we're not many
noble, or mighty, that we are the weak and the lowly and the nothings and the nobodies. We have
the mind of Christ. We thank You that that's been made known to us and understandable to us by
the work that You do, O blessed Holy Spirit. And we regret and we are pained by the attitudes today
that shut You out. This must be of all times a time of grief for You. We are warned in Scripture not to
grieve the Holy Spirit. We're warned not to quench the Holy Spirit. And we're called to give honor to
You, O Holy Spirit. May You forgive the horrendous sins against You by those who claim to be the
children of God. And may You give the church a new desire to know Your work and to know Your
person, to experience Your power, to depend upon You. May we who are in the Spirit live by the
Spirit and not by the flesh. May we not be like those Galatians, become bewitched by human means
but know always that the work that You do is done through the Word. Make us faithful to that and
may You be honored in our lives as we walk according to Your will and in Your power. We pray in
Christ's name. Amen.
 The Essential Ministry of the Holy Spirit, Part 2
Selected Scriptures

Tonight we're going to continue our look at the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We are in a doctrinal study
and sometimes we dig a little deep and cover some more narrow aspects of theology. And
sometimes we give a kind of general overview, a little bit more simple, straight-forward sort of
beginning understanding of these various doctrines. And in doing so, we endeavor to speak to those
who have been around a while, and who know and understand the great themes of theology, and at
the same time talk to those who are new and need a basic understanding. And tonight, as we saw in
our last look at the ministry of the Spirit, we're really talking about a very basic understanding of the
work of the Holy Spirit.

I think it is obvious to all of us that the Holy Spirit is the member of the Trinity who gets the least
attention. We have many, many songs that are written and sung about God, about the glory of God,
the character of God, the mighty work of God from creation through redemption. We have hymnals
filled with songs of praise to God. We have many songs, perhaps even more, about the marvelous
realities of the person of Christ and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, there seems to be no
end to the songs that are written about our Savior. We have far fewer hymns and far fewer songs
that are dedicated to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. He is included here and there as a
verse, or in a reference to the Trinity, but there is not just a substantial hymnology related to the Holy
Spirit and that leaves us a little on the short end of giving worship to the third member of the Trinity,
worship which is due to the Spirit.

We are also unlikely to tolerate a doctrinal error regarding the nature of God. We run, as it were, to
rescue God from heretics and from those who would speak of Him in a way that is not a true
reflection of His nature. We do all we can to protect the character of God and the work of God. We
do the same for Christ. We are exceedingly eager to make sure that there is no misrepresentation of
the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are careful in defining the facets of the
incarnation, of the nature of Christ, the inhumanated God, the God in human flesh. We are eager to
understand every nuance of His redeeming work, to understand the cross and the significance of the
cross and the great doctrinal themes of redemption in all their fullness and in all their minute detail.
Careful indeed we are when it comes to God and Christ.

When it comes, on the other hand, to the Holy Spirit, we...we tend to be far more tolerant of
misrepresentations of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, which, by the way, abound everywhere. We
don't often come to the rescue of the great truths concerning the Holy Spirit. I have endeavored
through the years to do that from time to time, a number of years ago wrote a book called The
Charismatics in an effort to call into question an unbiblical movement misrepresenting the work of the
Holy Spirit. I had no idea at the time that the movement would continue to expand far beyond what I
saw when I wrote that book back in the seventies. I wrote another book called Charismatic Chaos
which endeavored to look again at that misrepresentation of the Holy Spirit in that particular paradigm
of sanctification that we know as the Charismatic Movement.

It was also a few years after that, that I felt the need to address the issue of the paradigm of
psychology and much of what I was preaching and teaching, not just here but in pastor conferences
and other opportunities I had around the country and around the world, was to try to define a true
biblical understanding of sanctification apart from the intrusion of human psychology. But again I
often felt like a voice crying in the wilderness, like I was swimming up stream against the evangelical
trend which was an ever-expanding Charismatic Movement and an ever-expanding Psychological
Movement. Then came the Pragmatic Movement where we have pretty well defined the idea that we
move ahead in our spiritual lives by techniques, by certain means and modes of operation that we
can learn if we sit under the right teachers and apply the right principles. And pragmatism has done
the same thing, it has deemphasized, it has deprioritized, it has in some cases almost banished the
Holy Spirit away. There's very little talk in the pragmatic, market-driven ministry of evangelicalism
today about the work of the Holy Spirit. So I come again with the same sort of agenda that I have
occasionally through the years and that is to call our attention back to the reality of the person and
the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Having a true paradigm of sanctification, a true understanding of the
work of the Spirit is critical because false paradigms of sanctification cannot restrain the flesh, they
cannot lead away from sin, they cannot lead to spiritual growth and spiritual effectiveness, nor to the
glory of God.

The church has very weak doctrines regarding the Holy Spirit, His person and work, and a very great
tolerance for errors concerning the work and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

And so, we're looking at the issue of how the Holy Spirit ministers to us who are in the family of God.
And we started as a good departure point with Galatians chapter 3 and a question that is posed in
verse 3, "Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit are you now being perfected by the flesh?"
We will, if we think about it, and think about it biblically, remember that our salvation is a work of the
Spirit. We are begotten again by the Spirit of God through the means of the Word of Truth. We are
born of the Spirit as we were talking about even this morning. So we understand that our new birth,
our regeneration, our conversion is a work of the Spirit of God. It is not by blood, or of the will of the
flesh or of the will of man but of God through the Spirit that we have been saved. And then having
begun in the Spirit, that is begun our life in Christ in the Spirit, are we so foolish as to think that
spiritual perfection can come through the flesh, through some human means? And the answer to the
question, of course, is we ought not to be so foolish, we ought to recognize that as we were
regenerated by the Spirit, we will be sanctified as well by the Spirit and only by the Spirit.

Now we looked at the beginning at the saving work of the Holy Spirit. We talked about four things,
that the Spirit convicts of sin. Jesus said in John 16 He would send the Spirit and when He comes
He would convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. This is the initial work of the Holy
Spirit in saving a person, to convict that person of their sin. This is not natural to man. This does not
come by the will of man, as we saw in the words of Jesus who said concerning the rich young ruler,
that this man is trying to do by himself something that is impossible. He cannot change his own life.
Even conviction of sin, even the work of the Law rendering him guilty before God under a curse and
headed for eternal judgment is a kind of conviction not natural to humanity but supernaturally granted
by the Spirit of God. So He does the work of conviction.

Flowing out of that is His second work, He produces out of that conviction penitence, or repentance.
It is also the work of the Holy Spirit to cause the sinner to repent.

Thirdly, the Spirit energizes the gospel in the individual heart. It is the Spirit who makes the gospel
alive. It is the Spirit who quickens the gospel. Even in its preaching, 1 Peter 1:12 says, "The gospel
was preached by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven." That is, it was preached so that it penetrated the
heart and in a transforming way.

And, of course, then fourthly the Spirit does the actual work of regeneration, being renewed, being
given new life. That's the saving work of the Spirit...conviction, repentance, energizing gospel truth in
the heart so as to elicit faith and the work of regeneration.

That's all the work of the Spirit. Salvation is all the work of the Spirit. Like the wind, it blows where it
wills. It comes from wherever it desires to come. It goes to wherever it desires to go. We have no
control over it, we can only see its effect. So is the Holy Spirit. He does what He wills with whom He
wills when He wills, even in the work of regeneration, as Jesus was pointing out to Nicodemus. So it
is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now at the time of salvation there are a number of other things that the Spirit of God does.
According to the scriptures, very clearly the Spirit of God immediately takes up residence in the life of
every believer so that 1 Corinthians 6:19 says that we are the temple of the Spirit of God. Romans
8:9 puts it this way, "If any man be in Christ, he has the Holy Spirit. If any man have not the Spirit, he
is none of His." So the Spirit of God takes up residence in the believer. First Corinthians 12:13 puts it
this way, "We are baptized by Christ through the Spirit into the body." And so there is a baptizing
work that Christ does by means of the power of the Spirit, placing us in the body of Christ. That's all
at the very moment of salvation.

We should conclude also that at that very moment the Spirit secures us unto eternal glory. The first
chapter of Ephesians makes this very clear, that we're given the Holy Spirit as a seal, that is we are
sealed unto the day of redemption. So we receive the Holy Spirit, it takes up residence in us. The
Spirit of God then by His power places us into the life of the church, the body of Christ. The Spirit
secures us unto eternal glory.

There is even a separating work of the Holy Spirit. It says in 1...1...2 Thessalonians, rather, chapter
2 verse 13, that we have been sanctified by the Spirit and faith in the truth, meaning set apart from
sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us. We are set apart from it by the work of the Spirit.

And another thing the Spirit does, according to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verses 4 to 7, is the Spirit of
God grants to us ministry capabilities, supernatural ministry capabilities. These are called the gifts of
the Spirit. All of this converges at the very moment of our redemption, from conviction and
repentance and faith in the gospel, this whole regenerating work to the Spirit taking up residence in
us, the Spirit baptizing us in to the body of Christ, securing our eternal glory, separating us from sin
and giving us ministry, spiritually supernaturally endowed ministry capabilities, all of this occurs at our
salvation. So that's how we begin in the Spirit. It is a powerful, powerful Spirit dominated thing to
become a child of God. It is a great, mighty, pervasive, lasting, permanent work that is supernatural
and is carried out by the Spirit of God.

If you think about it Trinitarian sense, it is the Father who elects, it is the Father who draws, it is the
Son who pays the price to purchase the redeemed and it is the Spirit then that applies the work of the
Father and the work of the Son to the individual. Now that we possess all of these things by means
of the Holy Spirit who has taken up residence in us so that we are as long as we are living in this
world, indwelt by the living Holy Spirit, what is His ongoing work? Having begun in the Spirit, how are
we then perfected in the Spirit?

Last time I gave you a couple of things to start. Number one, the Spirit brings us increasingly into
intimacy with God. The Spirit brings us increasingly into intimacy with God. You heard John say
when he was giving his testimony tonight that he knows God, that he knows Christ, that he loves
Christ, that he knows there's a personal relationship with the Lord that exists in his life. This is the
work of the Holy Spirit. This is the Spirit's ministry. And we pointed out a couple of verses, I will just
briefly remind you of because they're important ones in this regard. Romans chapter 8 verse 14, "For
all who are being led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God, you have not received a spirit of
slavery leading to fear again, but have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out
Abba, Father." Abba Father means daddy. All of a sudden we think of God as our papa, as our
daddy, no longer a distant, awesome, fearful, transcendent figure not to be toyed with, but all of a
sudden we have been moved into a sense of intimacy with God where we rush in to His presence like
little children, calling Him Papa in the most endearing way and we do it without fear, and that is
because of a certain attitude, a certain disposition that has been wrought in us by the work of the
indwelling Spirit. And it says so in verse 16, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we're
the children of God. This is the work of the Spirit, to confirm to us that we belong to God in such a
true and intimate way as to be able to call God our Papa. The same wonderful truth is laid out for us
in Galatians chapter 4 where it says in verse 6, "God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our
hearts, crying Abba Father." When we speak to God with familiarity, when we speak to God with
intimacy, when we talk about our God being personal and knowing God, this is the work of the Holy
Spirit.

The second thing that I pointed out to you last time, not only does the Spirit bring us into intimacy
with God, but He illuminates the Scripture...He illuminates the Scripture. We looked at 1 Corinthians
chapter 2 and won't go through it again in detail, but remember what it says there, "God has revealed
the things which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither can enter into the heart of man, God
has revealed them through the Spirit...through the Spirit. And the Spirit has given them to us...verse
13...not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual
thoughts with spiritual words." God has taken spiritual truth, God the Spirit has taken spiritual truth
and put it in spiritual words in the Scripture so that in the Scripture we have the mind of Christ. And
as we learned from 1 John, we also had the indwelling Holy Spirit who is an anointing from God who
teaches us all things. So we have the Word authored by the Spirit, spiritual truths put in spiritual
words. And we have not only the Scripture authored by the Spirit but we have dwelling in us the
teacher of Scripture, the anointing that comes from God.

All right, number three, and we'll move long in our little outline on the basic ministries of the Holy
Spirit, He glorifies Christ to us...He glorifies Christ to us. Let's look at John 15 for a moment...John
chapter 15, verse 26. And here our Lord says, "When the Helper comes, or when the Comforter
comes, when the parakletos, from two words, to call and to be beside, when the One who is called to
come alongside beside us, when He comes whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit
of Truth..." He's talking about the Day of Pentecost, talking about the time when the Spirit of God is
dispensed. "He is the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me." He
will bear witness of Me.

In chapter 16, if you go down to verse 14, the same thing is said again. Actually verse 13, "When He
the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth." That's what we just saw in the second
point. "He will not speak on His own initiative, whatever He hears He will speak and He will disclose
to you what is to come." This, of course, relates to the inspiration that came by the means of the
Spirit to the writers of Scripture, but it goes beyond that as well. He is the Spirit of Truth. He guides
us into all truth in the Scripture and as the true interpreter of Scripture residing in us. Then verse 14
says, "He shall glorify Me for He shall take of Mine and shall disclose it to you." This is the wonderful
ministry of the Spirit of God, it is to point us to Jesus Christ.

Now if you'll look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12, you'll see this in a completely different context, but a
very important one...1 Corinthians chapter 12. In the Corinthian church there was a debacle going on
in the name of spiritual gifts. People were speaking gibberish as if it were a true gift of language from
God. It was a kind of pagan gibberish, a kind of esoteric experience that is still common in some
pagan environments. They were sometimes speaking, thinking it was the Spirit of God and they were
actually cursing Christ. This could be be because they actually on some occasions spoke a language
given to them somehow, or spoken through them by demons. Demons were using the disarray of the
Corinthian church to misrepresent the truth and to blaspheme Christ. And so he says to them in
verse 1, "Concerning spirituals, I don't want you to be unaware. You know that when you were
pagans you were led astray to the dumb idols, however you were led." When you were in paganism,
you were led away into mindless kind of experiences, led astray to the dumb idols, certainly by
demons. And I want this to be made known to you, no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus
is accursed.

Can you imagine that in the name of some spiritual gifts from God, they were cursing Jesus? Paul
says no one ever speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed. "But on the other side, no
one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." The Holy Spirit is concerned to exalt Christ.
Anyone who exalts Christ is doing so under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit always
leads us to ascribe glory to Christ, to ascribe lordship to Christ as the one glorious divine person who
is our Savior and our Redeemer. Not only to lead us to salvation, it's not just to lead us to salvation.
I believe that Jesus Christ is really the theme of all the scriptures. He was He Himself who said on
the road to Emmaus that He was the theme of the Old Testament. He said, "Search the scriptures,
they speak of Me," earlier in His ministry. And on the road to Emmaus He began at Moses and all
the prophets and holy writings and showed them all the things concerning Himself. He is the theme
of the Old Testament. He certainly is the theme of the gospels. His gospel is the theme of the book
of Acts and His redemptive work is the theme of all the epistles and His glorious return is the theme
of the book of Revelation. And so He is the theme of all Scripture so that the Holy Spirit continues in
applying the truth of Scripture to us to point directly to the glory of Jesus Christ.
 And what does He have in mind? Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 3 for just a moment, 2 Corinthians
chapter 3 and the last verse in this great chapter. Second Corinthians 3:18, Paul says, "We all with
unveiled face," unlike Moses who had a veil over his face in his experience of the glory of God in the
Old Testament, the veil is off, "we behold as in a glass clearly unveiled the glory of the Lord." We
don't see things in a shadowy way, as Moses saw when he was tucked in to the side of a rock and
looked out and God let the glory pass by him, only the back part of it, not the full glory. We don't
have a diminished view of God such as Moses did. We don't have, nor does the church of Jesus
Christ have, a veiled view of God. In Christ God is unveiled in a greater way than ever in the Old
Testament, and He will one day be unveiled in a fuller way when He comes in His Second Coming
and displays Himself in that glory which we will enjoy in eternity. But for now, the veil is off as it was
on in the Old Testament. And we look in a clear glass and see the glory of the Lord. And where is
that that we look? It is in the Word of God. This is where His glory is revealed. It is revealed in the
Scripture. And as we continue to see the glory of the Lord revealed in Scripture, verse 18 says, "We
are being transformed into the same image. We move from one level of glory to the next." This is
ascending levels of glory.

Another way to say, we become more and more like Christ. As we gaze at His glory, we are being
transformed into the same image. What image? The image of the glory of Christ that we see in
Scripture. One of the reasons that we always preach Christ, one of the reasons that I never can be
content to be out of the gospels of Christ is because Christ must always be on display. He must
always be the focus of everything because as you gaze at His glory, you are transformed into His
image, moving from one level of glory to the next, to the next. This is a typical biblical way to talk
about an ascending or increasing glory. And who does the work? End of verse 18, "Just as from the
Lord, the Spirit." So the Spirit not only shows us Christ at the time of our salvation energizing our faith
in the gospel, but the Spirit continues to disclose to us the glory of Christ and as that is disclosed to
us through the Word which He has authored and through the illumination as we read the Word, we
are literally being transformed into the very image of that glory by the work of the Holy Spirit. So in
an ongoing way, He glorifies Christ to us and shapes us increasingly into the glory of Christ. You
remember what Paul said in Galatians 4:19, "My children with whom I am again in labor until Christ is
formed in you." Any faithful pastor understands that we want God's people to be like Christ. This is
the prize of the upward call for which Paul gave His life. He pursued the image of Christ. As we
gaze on the glory of Christ, a transformation takes place.

It is a in some ways an imperceptible, in some ways a slow not monumental transformation, it is a

gradual moving, ever-increasingly up the glorious ladder toward the full image of Christ. This is done
by the work of the Holy Spirit. And He does it through the Word which is where the glory of Christ is
revealed and displayed.

Number four, the Holy Spirit personally guides us into God's will. Now you want to be careful when
you talk about this because you have a lot of people running around today saying you need to listen
for the voice of God, God wants to speak to you, be sure you tune in somehow and listen to His
voice. And that can get a little bit dangerous. We're not talking about impulses. We're not talking
about some kind of experience that you can feel. That can be very dangerous. What we are talking
about is that there is a supernatural moving of the Spirit of God providentially in the life of a believer
in the direction of that which God purposes. And sometimes we don't even know it until it's done.

I can think back to a...well, for example, my wife Patricia, I married her, I thought it was in the will of
God. But I didn't have any supernatural inclination. There wasn't any halo over her head. There
wasn't any supernatural work of God by which He spoke to me out of the darkness and said, "Marry
this girl." I wanted to marry her, I knew that. I didn't want to marry anybody else ever, I just wanted
to marry her. And I thought my life was right and so I thought that if I did what was right the Lord
would be leading me. And so I married her. I had no idea what my life would be like, and she had no
idea, right? She still has no idea of what's coming. We had no idea of what the future looked like.
We had no concept of where it would go. God knew where it would go. God knew exactly what I
needed. God knew exactly what the plan was and who the perfect helpmeet was. The Spirit of God
led me.
Now this wasn't easy for the Spirit of God because when I began to notice her, she was engaged to
somebody else. That's a serious problem. In fact, it was so far down the road that she had wedding
invitations for the wedding to that guy addressed in the trunk of her car and she was supposed to
take them to the post office. Who restrained her? There's no question. There's no question. Now at
that time she didn't know what a good thing she was getting (laughter). But the bottom line was, what
is going on here is this amazing moving of the Spirit of God who stops a young girl from sending out
wedding invitations and she really doesn't know why. And at the time, I had no power to deal with
that. But God knew everything about it and God knew the person I needed for my life and to be the
mother of my children and the grandmother of my grandchildren, and to be my partner in ministry.
And His subjective ministry is that kind of personal providential guidance.

And you say, "Well how do..how do...how do...how can you be sure that you're going to follow when
it happens?" And the bottom line, and I've said this for years and years in teaching young people, you
just make sure that you're walking with the Lord the way you ought to walk, and if you're walking with
the Lord in obedience to His Word, that's what it means to walk in the Spirit. And if you're walking in
the Spiri, He'll walk you right into the place He wants you to be.

Why did I come to Grace Church? Well there were a couple of other churches in other places that
had talked to me about being a pastor. One was on an island in Hawaii. That had a small appeal.
Another one was a church in Long Beach and why here? I came here...I didn't hear any voices from
God. I didn't hear any signs from heaven. But it was so obvious that God was leading me here,
more obvious when I arrived, more obvious now than ever. And this is back to Romans 8:14, "As
many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." He doesn't just start you out and
then leave you on your own. You go from there.

It's a little more dramatic, for example, in the book of Acts in chapter 13 of the book of Acts. "There
were in Antioch...at verse 1...in the church that was there prophets and teachers, Barnabas and
Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen who had been brought up with
Herod the tetrarch, and Saul, while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said,
'Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' And when they had
fasted and prayed, laid hands on them, they sent them away. They were sent out by the Holy Spirit."

Now obviously the Holy Spirit spoke in that day before there was the Scripture completion and there
were various miraculous things going on in the apostolic era. That's not the point. That's not how the
Spirit of God works now. But the point that I want you to notice there is that the Spirit of God does
determine who He wants to go where. And that hasn't changed. And so we can have the confidence
that the Spirit of God providentially is going to direct us. It's not going to be a feeling. It's going to be
the unfolding of His will and to be in the middle of it, you need to make sure you're walking in the
Spirit which means to be walking consistently in obedience to the Word of God. And we'll look at that
when we get down our list a little further.

I love what it says in Acts 15. "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater
burden then these essentials." Now that's walking in the Spirit. It seemed good to the Spirit and to
us. Here's the confidence that they were operating in the direction that was consistent with the work
of the Spirit. Acts 16, they passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden
by the Holy Spirit to speak the Word in Asia. And when they had come to Mysia, they were trying to
go to Bithynia, the Spirit of Jesus didn't permit them."

Now look, here they are again. In some cases it seems good for the Spirit to have them go this
way. It was the Spirit's will to separate them out of the Antiochian church and send them elsewhere.
On another occasion, the Spirit stops them from going in a certain place. The phenomena of that
apostolic era are different...were different than now. But the same Spirit exercises the same
purposes and the same will to have us go here and not go there. And if you want to enjoy the
fullness of the Spirit in a life partner, in a life career, in a ministry, it behooves us then to be in the
Spirit and that is to be walking in the Spirit, and that is to be walking in obedience to the Word of God
so that we are under the Spirit's control.
 So the Holy Spirit provides intimacy with God. The Holy Spirit illuminates the Scripture. The Holy
Spirit glorifies Christ. And the Holy Spirit guides us into God's will...not by violence, not by violating
our inclination, but by supernaturally bending our will, supernaturally changing our desires and by
providence, the ordering of circumstances. The Holy Spirit stirs the heart as well as illuminating the
mind. Psalm 143:10, "Teach me to do Thy will." Psalm 119:35, "Make me go in the path of Thy
commandments and therein do I delight."

A.W. Pink described this leading of the Spirit with these words, "Those who are directed by this
divine Spirit are moved to examine their hearts and take frequent notice of their ways, to mourn over
their carnality and perverseness, to confess their sins and earnestly seek grace to enable them to be
obedient." Now as you pray that way and as you live that way, the Spirit of God directs your life. It's
such a wonderful way to live. It's all I've ever known in my life. It's all I've ever known. The Spirit of
God led me to the right woman. The Spirit of God led me to the right church. The Spirit of God led
me to the right school, the right ministry, the right people to work with. My life is filled with people that
have all been dropped into my life by the Holy Spirit. It's amazing...it's amazing. In fact, it's
overwhelming to have the Holy Spirit drop so many gifted people into your life. People say to me,
"How do you do so many different ministries? How...how do you do all that?" And my answer is I
don't do all that, I just basically show up here on Sunday and preach and everything else happens
because the Lord through the work of the Spirit has drawn into this ministry a myriad of gifted
people. And I look at all these people and I say they're all gifts of the Holy Spirit. They're all given to
me by the providential working of the Holy Spirit. And I hope that all these folks also feel that all the
rest of us are given to them by the Holy Spirit. Just an amazing thing to live your life, never look
back, never second guess. People say to me, "If you had your life to live over again, what would you
do different?" My answer is, "I'm not in charge of my life...I'm not in charge of my life. My life has
happened to me, I haven't made it happen." I still don't understand why it happens the way it
happens. But what an adventure. If you just stay in the place where God wants you to be, then
you're going to walk in the Spirit and you're going to just walk right in to the areas of the will of God
that the Spirit has for you.

Well, I'll give you one more and then I'll save the last few for next time. I'll be gone a couple of weeks
so it will be a few weeks before we get back to it. Number five, the Spirit ministers to us through the
body of believers. And I wanted to say this because it fits what I've just been talking about. God
surrounds us with people by His Holy Spirit. He draws us all together in a way that creates mutual
ministry for maximum impact. This is not just a church where people sit in a pew and listen to
somebody talk. This is not just a religion with adherence. This is, by the definition of the New
Testament, a body of believers. We are the body of Christ. We have common life, the life of God,
and we've been put together like a body is put together, with all the necessary parts for total and
complete efficiency spiritually and to accomplish the will of God. And all the parts have to be there.
We have to have people who have the gift of leadership and the ability to preach and teach and
minister. We have to have those who can discern the knowledge of Scripture and apply the wisdom
of the Word of God. We have to have people who serve and people who have the gift of faith who
can pray. All of those functions, all of those ministries are crucial to the body of Christ.

Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and we'll see how this is the work of the Holy Spirit. First
Corinthians chapter 12, verse 4, "There are variety of gifts, but the same Spirit....the same Spirit, the
very same Spirit by which we can say Jesus is Lord, is the one who empowers all of these gifts."
We're not talking about somebody like a gifted child, that's a different use of the word all together.
We're not talking about your ability to play the violin, or being precocious mathematically when you're
six years old. We're not talking about your IQ, we're not talking about your athletic skill. Those are
human things. We're talking about spiritual gifts here, spiritual abilities, ministry abilities. They are
given by the Spirit. There are a variety of ministries, same Lord, variety of effects, same God. There
are differing abilities, they function in different ministries and they have a variety of effects. It's all the
same God. It's all the same Lord. And it's all the same Spirit. "But to each one," verse 7, each
believer, "is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." Every one of you as a
believer, has the manifestation of the Spirit through a ministry ability. The Spirit of God has given you
a ministry ability for the common good. It's not for you, it's for us...it's for us. To one is given the
word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit,
another is faith by the same Spirit. And then there were in the apostolic time gifts of healing,
miracles, to another prophecy, the distinguishing of spirits, various kinds of tongues, interpretation of
tongues. One in the same Spirit works all these things distributing to each one individually just as He
wills.

Every individual has a manifestation of the Spirit in a ministry ability in apostolic time...and that's a
whole other study for another time. There were sign gifts which are miracles, healing, tongues,
interpretation of tongues. Romans chapter 12 also has a list of gifts that needs to be compared to
this one, Romans chapter 12, talks about one body, all members do not have the same function,
verse 4. We who are many are one body in Christ, individually members one of another. We have
gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving,
leading, showing mercy. In 1 Peter 4 you have two categories, there are the serving gifts and the
speaking gifts and they are manifold and multi-colored. And they are all given us by the Holy Spirit.
That's what verse 11 says, 1 Corinthians 12:11, "One and the same Spirit works all these things."
This is the amazing thing. The Lord by the Spirit collects all these people together so that we can
mutually minister to one another in fullness that there might be a manifestation of the full glory of
Christ through His body which is the church. That's why we are commanded in Hebrews 10, and this
is...this is an important command, familiar to you, Hebrews chapter 10 verse 24, "Let us consider how
to stimulate one another to love and good deeds." How do we do that? Through our gifts...through
our ministries to one another. "Not forsaking our own assembling together as the habit of some."
Don't be like some who aren't here all the time. "Don't forsake the assembly, but rather encourage
one another all the more as you see the day drawing near."

We meet together for mutual ministry. We meet together to stimulate one another to love and good
works. You could add to that all the list of the one anothers in the New Testament, exhort one
another, pray for one another, love one another, rebuke one another, reprove one another, restore
one another, and they go on and on and on. This is how the body of Christ functions. All of this "one
another," all of this gifting is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit then has an ongoing ministry
through the body of believers. My gift is not for me, it's for you. Your gift is not for you, it's for me.
And we're all enriched by the multiplicity of Spirit-given, Spirit-energized gifts.

So when you think about the Holy Spirit, spend some time worshiping the Holy Spirit. Worship Him.
Worship Him the same way you worship Christ. Worship Him the same way you worship God the
Father. I know we don't have enough hymns to sing to the Holy Spirit, we need to write more.
Worship the Holy Spirit as the One who has regenerated you, as the One who has drawn you into
intimacy with God, as the One who has given you the Scripture and is illuminating you to understand
that Scripture, as the One who is showing you the glory of Christ, as the One who is personally
guiding you into the will of God, orchestrating all the issues of your life in the direction of God's will,
as the One who has placed you in the body and gifted you and all the people around you for mutual
ministry. Why? Let's look at Ephesians 4 and we'll stop there and see how this mutual ministry
works. Ephesians 4 verse 12, it talks about the equipping of the saints for the work of service...the
equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ. Why? Until we
all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the
measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

What we want is a body that looks like Christ's. I appreciated what Rick said a moment ago when he
said that people who come to the conferences go away not just talking about the teaching but talking
about the ministry of the people. That is as much the work of the Holy Spirit as the teaching and the
preaching is. And that is the fullness of the body manifesting the fullness of Christ. That's what a
church should be. People should come to a church and they should say the teaching is obviously
empowered by the Holy Spirit. But so is the loving and so is the fellowship and so is the mutual
ministry at every level. It is obvious that the ministry of children and young people and adults is
energized by the Holy Spirit. It is obvious that the ministry to the needy and those that are suffering
is energized by the Spirit of God. It ought to be pervasive so that Christ is manifest everywhere
because we have reached what Paul calls the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of
Christ.

Well, my time is gone and I have a couple of other important ones, and then a kind of final picture
about how to walk in the Spirit, but we'll save that for next time.

Holy Spirit, we come before You now to worship You and we ask forgiveness for grieving You, for
quenching You, for not giving to You the honor and the glory that You are due. You are as worthy as
are Christ, You are as worthy has God the Father, You are all glorious, You are wondrous, You are
majestic, You are eternal. We worship You. We give You praise and honor and thanks for
implementing all that the Father and Son have set in the eternal decree to unfold in the plan of
redemption. We thank You for convicting us of sin, leading us to repentance, quickening our hearts
under the power of the gospel, for regenerating us, we thank You, O Holy Spirit, for the ongoing work
of sanctification, separating us from sin further and further. We thank You for coming to take up Your
residence in us though we are unworthy. We thank You for placing us into the body. We thank You
for equipping us with ministry capability that is supernatural. We thank You for glorifying Christ
increasingly to us and shaping us into His image. We thank You for leading us, to understand the
Word and to know Your will in the providences of life. We thank You for drawing us into the place
where You want us to be, enriching our lives with such good gifts. Thank You for putting us in the
body of Christ where You can minister to us not only in our own lives but through the lives of those
who surround us in the fellowship. We love You. Teach us to love You more and to rejoice in You.
May we never, never assign to You those things that are not Yours. May we never cheapen You.
May we defend the integrity of Your ministry as revealed in Scripture. May we defend Your honor
and Your glory. May we be true representatives of Your work. May we put Your work on display by
the way we live individually. May it be obvious that we are Spirit-filled, Spirit controlled, and Spirit led
for there's no other explanation for our spiritual impact as individuals. And may our church respond
so to Your powerful influences through the Word and through Your internal leading that we might
come in the exercise of all our ministries to the very fullness of Christ, that Christ truly would be on
display. We know this pleases You, for as Christ came to show us the Father, You have come to
glorify the Son. And we praise You and we thank You for this work. We thank You that You sealed
us to eternal glory and the seal can never be broken. You have secured us to our heavenly
destination, for that as well, we praise You. And we commit again to walk in obedience to the will that
is revealed through Scripture, that we might truly walk in Your power and in Your direction and know
the fullness of joy that You grant for the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy
Spirit. Give us that joy in fullness, we pray, in Christ's name. Amen.