Indwelt by the Spirit

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in John chapter 16, John chapter 16 this morning. I had already been working on this message through the week, and then on Thursday evening, my son was headed somewhere with me in the car, and he started asking me questions, or better said, he never stops asking me questions. He started asking me questions about how big is God, and so I started answering, you know, He’s big enough that he fills the whole universe, but he’s small enough that he can live inside of you.

And he was asking me questions then about how God lives inside of us. And I was trying to explain to him as best I could the Holy Spirit. And he was asking, well, how does he live inside of everybody at one time?

So I was talking about spirit being different from having a body. And I think at least for now, I satisfied his curiosity. But it just sort of reinforces for me that the Trinity is a hard thing to understand.

Now, it’s biblical, but it’s a hard thing to understand. And part of that is because we’re talking about finite minds like ours, minds that can only absorb so much information trying to explain an infinite God. We’re never going to completely wrap our minds around who God is.

And so I think I understand the Trinity, but the harder I try to think about it and the more I try to nail it down, the harder it gets to understand. So the Trinity is hard, but of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is probably the hardest one for us to understand and explain. I think we sort of, God the Father is fairly easy to explain in relation to the Holy Spirit.

I mean, growing up, I knew God made the world, God did this, God did that. We’re talking about God the Father. It’s fairly easy to understand the idea of God as being the Spirit who sits on the throne in heaven.

Jesus is fairly easy for us to understand because he came and put on human flesh and walked around like one of us for 30 plus years. We understand that. Even though he’s God in human flesh, we understand, okay, he’s got a body.

He ate. He walked around. He died.

These are things that we identify with. The Holy Spirit is a little harder to understand. As a matter of fact, if you look at Acts chapter 19, I believe it was.

You don’t have to turn there. But if you look at Acts chapter 19 sometime, in the city of Ephesus, there were people who thought they were believers, and Paul said, have you received the gift of the Holy Spirit? And they said, well, we didn’t even realize there was a Holy Spirit.

So they were going through what they thought were the beginnings of the Christian faith. They didn’t even realize there was a Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is harder than the other two, it seems, to pin down.

And yet, it’s vitally important as we go through this study that we’ve been doing, some of the basic things that we as Christians believe, and some of the basic things that this church teaches, and not for their own sake, but these teachings and how they affect our view of Christ, the Holy Spirit is really important that we nail down. And it’s important that we understand the Holy Spirit not as a thing, but as a being. Not as a thing, but as a person.

And when I say person, I don’t mean like human being. But I mean as an entity that thinks and feels and has a will. See, there are some people who look at the Holy Spirit as being just a force, a power.

I don’t know that this is the official teaching of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I’ve heard some Jehovah’s Witnesses liken the Holy Spirit to radio waves. That there’s a force there, that there’s something there, but it doesn’t have a personality. Well, that’s not what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit.

The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is a person. It’s a personal spirit, and it’s the third person of the Trinity. And so we have to understand the Holy Spirit as being not a thing, but a being.

Because if we look at the Holy Spirit as a thing, it’s just an it. It’s just a what. then we start to look at it as something we can possess instead of something that possesses us.

We can start to look at the Holy Spirit as being some kind of asset that we have, something that makes us special, something that makes us powerful, as opposed to someone who uses us for God’s purpose. And as I was thinking about this this week, I came across something that was written by R. A.

Torrey, and some of you may have heard of him, may have read some of his things. But he wrote, If we think of the Holy Spirit as only an impersonal power or influence, then our thought will constantly be, how can I get a hold of and use the Holy Spirit? But if we think of Him in the biblical way as a divine person, infinitely wise, infinitely holy, infinitely tender, then our thought will constantly be, how can the Holy Spirit get hold of and use me?

Do you see the difference there? If the Holy Spirit is just a thing, then it’s something that we can grab hold of and use for our own purposes. But if we start to see the Holy Spirit as a being, then it’s someone who gets hold of us and uses us for the purposes of God.

It’s a different way of thinking about the Holy Spirit. If we think, he goes on to say, if we think of the Holy Spirit merely as a divine power or influence, and then imagine that we have received the Holy Spirit, there will be the temptation to feel as if we belonged to a superior order of Christians. I have the Holy Spirit.

I have more of the Holy Spirit than you do. I’m a better Christian than you do. He says, a woman once came to me to ask a question and began by saying, before I ask the question, I want you to understand that I am a Holy Ghost woman.

It’s an interesting thing to say. He said, the words and the manner of uttering them made me shudder. I could not believe that they were true.

But if we think of the Holy Spirit in the biblical way as a divine being of infinite majesty, condescending to dwell in our hearts and take possession of our lives, it will put us in the dust and make us walk very softly before God. Those of you who come to Brother Terry’s class on Sunday nights at 5 o’clock, we’ve been talking about the Word of Faith movement some. And we’ve been talking about some of these false teachers.

And what a lot of them have in common is they’ll talk about the anointing of the Holy Spirit as though it is a thing for them to possess. And then you come to them for your filling of the Holy Spirit. And they can minister to you because, hey, I’ve got the power and I can control this.

One of them said that Gloria Copeland said they can control the weather. I can’t control the weather. They must have more Holy Spirit power than I do.

See, there are entire movements of Christianity built up around the idea that, hey, I can possess the Holy Spirit and use him to my ends. When what the Bible teaches is that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is not a thing we possess.

The Holy Spirit is a person who possesses us and uses us for God’s purposes. And so we’re going to look at John chapter 16 this morning, where Jesus teaches this, that the Holy Spirit is a personal spirit, the third person of the Trinity. Starting in verse 7, Jesus is teaching his disciples, he’s getting close to the point where he’s going to be crucified, and so he’s giving them some of their last instructions.

And among these last instructions, he says, Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.

But if I depart, I will send him unto you. So he’s telling them, because they’re about to be at the point, we don’t want you to go. After the crucifixion and after the resurrection, he’s going to spend some time with them, and then he’s going to ascend to heaven.

They’re not going to want him to go. Can you imagine Jesus walking in our midst for three years and seeing all the things that they saw and then having to say goodbye to Jesus? We wouldn’t want him to go either.

But Jesus says it’s expedient. It’s best for you if I go away. Not that they didn’t need Jesus, but they needed the presence of God that would be with them wherever they went.

And Jesus, in his physical earthly form, was really in one place at a time. See, he was still fully God, but he kind of limited himself in ways with that human body. And so what he’s talking about is a comforter who would come, the spirit of God, the spirit with nobody, who is everywhere all the time.

and the Holy Spirit can be in me right now here in Seminole, Oklahoma, and can be with that brother at the same time who is ministering in Brooklyn that we just saw the video of just a minute ago. He’s not only in me right now, but he’s in that man as well. And he’s in you at the same time.

He doesn’t have to hop back and forth. He’s in all of us. He’s with the people at that church plant in Brooklyn.

He’s up the road at First Baptist. He’s with the believers who are in prison camps in North Korea. Folks, he’s everywhere. He’s everywhere all at once.

And he’s there available as a comforter to all of us. And so Jesus said, when I go, he’ll come. And when he has come, verse 8, he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, of sin because they believe not on me, of righteousness because I go to my Father and ye see me no more, of judgment because the prince of this world is judged.

And he says in verse 12, I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. He said, there’s more for me to tell you, but you can’t, you’re not ready. You’re not ready.

You couldn’t take it now. He said, how be it, verse 13, how be it when he, the spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth. So Jesus says, there’s more to my truth than what we’re going to see just written here in the red letters.

Because if we believe that Jesus is God, then anytime the Bible speaks as God’s word, Jesus is speaking. He said, there are more things that you need to understand, but you’re not ready. He said, so when the Spirit comes in my name, when the Spirit comes, He will guide you into all truth.

And we saw that God continued speaking. God continued speaking through John. God continued speaking through the Apostle Paul.

God continued speaking through James and Peter. God continued speaking. And His Holy Spirit revealed this truth, and His Holy Spirit illuminates the truth to us today so that we can understand what He’s revealed.

He will guide you into all truth. Not just part of the truth. Not just a shadow of the truth, and you’ve got to figure out the rest of it for yourself.

But all the truth. All the truth that we need to know in order to be saved and to live a godly life. All the things that are necessary to make us wise unto salvation and to grow us up in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit would come and lead us, would guide us into all truth.

For He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear shall he speak and will show you things to come. He shall glorify me for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you. And all things that the Father hath are mine.

Therefore said I that he shall take of mine and shall show it unto you. Now as for the Holy Spirit being a personal spirit, my mind first of all goes to the fact that Jesus doesn’t really call him it. Jesus calls him he.

Now I think that’s a good place to begin the argument. But I’ve read where conservative scholars will say, yeah, don’t base it completely on the Greek grammar because there are problems there. Even if he wasn’t in Greek calling him he, even if that doesn’t really mean anything, you look through this passage, and really the other places where Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit, and all throughout it you’ll see the Holy Spirit doing things that a person does.

And when I say person, again, don’t get confused and think I mean just human person. I mean like a person as in God the Father is a person, a being with an intellect, with a will, not just a force, not just power, not just something that we can possess, but a person. You read through this, and he’s doing things that a person does.

He’s coming. He’s being sent. He’s reproving.

Electricity can come through the wall, and it does. It’s amazing, but electricity doesn’t reprove you. You can get a message of reproof on the radio.

Go listen to Christian radio. Go listen to some good Christian radio with sound teaching, and you’ll get some reproof from God’s Word, but the radio waves themselves did not reprove you or judge you. And he says, he will guide you into all truth.

He will glorify me. He will receive things from me. He’s talking about things that a person does.

All throughout this, Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit as a person, a personal spirit, the third person of the Trinity. And in the notes that you have, I’ve written down some verses that you can go look at on your own time that we won’t have time to get into this morning. But if you’ll read through those, those are by no means all of them.

But those are a few of the ones that I looked at this week that all through this, they are describing the Holy Spirit as being God or having the power of God or doing the things that God does. And all of this fits together in the doctrine of the Trinity to give us the idea that the Holy Spirit is a personal spirit, the third person of the Trinity. And so Jesus is telling his followers in this passage that this third person of the Trinity, when Jesus, when the second person of the Trinity, goes back up to the Father, who’s the first person of the Trinity, then the third member of the Trinity is going to come.

And any time I throw in the word Trinity, it automatically sounds more complicated. So what Jesus is saying, when I go back to my Father, the Spirit is going to come on our behalf. And He’s going to take up residence in you and among you.

And the same thing is true of us today. He lives in us, and He lives among us. If I am off by myself in the woods, I’m not really by myself.

The Holy Spirit is there with me. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, if you’ve been born again by His Spirit, then you have been indwelt by His Spirit, and that Spirit is within you. And the Holy Spirit’s in me, and the Holy Spirit’s in each of you who’s a believer here this morning.

But the Holy Spirit is also among us, and He’s working in our midst. If I were to tell you, if you were to find out, if you were to learn today that God intended to go with you, to accompany you on your day tomorrow, whatever you’ve got to do, make the list real quick in your mind of all the things you’ve got to do. Maybe you’ve got to go to work. Maybe you’ve got to go to the grocery store.

Maybe you’ve got a doctor’s appointment. Maybe you’re going to be sitting in traffic. Whatever it is that you’ve got to do tomorrow, the things that you do just going through an average regular Monday, if I told you that God was going to go with you, He was going to accompany you, He’s going to shadow you tomorrow.

Again, God’s going to be with you when you’re working on those cars. He’s going to come watch you. Charlie, God’s going to go with you when you’re fighting with the kids in the morning and trying to get them to get ready.

God’s going to be with you tomorrow when you’re cranky about the sun’s up and you have to be too. Whatever it is. Chuck, God’s going to be on the roof with you tomorrow.

If I said to you that God’s going to go with you where you’re going, and we thought about that, how would that make tomorrow different? Probably be on our best behavior a little bit, wouldn’t we? If I thought, hey, God is going to be with me in the passenger seat of that car.

I don’t like those stickers that say God is my co-pilot. Now, you need to switch seats, put God in the driver’s seat, and lock yourself in the trunk or something. Just let him drive.

But if God was coming on a ride along with me and God’s going to be in the passenger seat, I’m going to clean up my attitude in traffic, for starters. I’m going to be on my best behavior, like if one of y’all drive with me. I don’t cuss, but boy, do I sin in my heart when I get in traffic.

I’m going to clean that attitude up a little bit. I’m going to be a little more purposeful in the way I spend my time. If we were told that God was going to come and accompany us tomorrow, we would be different.

You would be different. Well, folks, the good news or the bad news, depending on how we’re doing at the moment, is that God is with us. Because the Holy Spirit is God.

And Jesus was telling his followers that the Holy Spirit was going to be with them and in them. So the long and the short of it is that the Holy Spirit is going to be with you tomorrow. So what difference should that make?

I’m not in there in your heart and in your brain to know what goes on. So I’ll leave that to you, but that gives me some things to think about. What would be different?

What should be different? With the knowledge that God is going with me tomorrow. And He’s there to watch me, and He’s there to comfort me, and He’s there to encourage me, but He’s also there to challenge me when I sin.

He’s there to reprove me. He’s there to point out when I sin and tell me how to get right. He’s there to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact is that the Holy Spirit indwells, which is a fancy word for lives inside of.

he indwells us and ministers to us on behalf of the Father and the Son. The Father is still seated on his throne in heaven, and the Son is still seated at his right hand, but that doesn’t make God any less present because the third person of the Godhead lives inside of you. Now that doesn’t make you God.

That doesn’t make me God. Here people say, well, God is within you. And a lot of times what Eastern philosophies mean by that is that you’ve got some spark of Godness inside you that makes you like God.

No, no, no. We are created beings. We are sinful creatures who have been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit lives inside of us, but he’s not us. He’s the presence of God within us to point us in the right direction.

He indwells us and he ministers to us on behalf of the Father and the Son. He ministers to us as a comforter of the brethren. As believers in Christ, we need comfort.

And that doesn’t mean, oh, I want you to be comfortable. That means sometimes this world can be a hard place, and we need to be comforted. That means sometimes we need to know that God, we need to be reminded that God is with us and God is in our corner.

And it says in verse 7 that he is a comforter who will come unto us that he’ll be with us always. And he’s sent here on behalf of the father and son. That word comforter in Greek has several meanings that go with it.

I believe the word is paraclete. And it means also an advocate. Somebody to argue our case.

Somebody to argue our case. We know what an advocate is. I do this for Charlotte at the doctor’s office when I think, wait a minute, you want us to come back and see a again.

We shouldn’t even be here this time. And talk to the doctors and say, no, this is what she needs. And advocate for her.

Advocate for my children all the time. You’re not going to push my kid around and play. Now they need to work it out sometimes for themselves.

But at some point, enough is enough, and daddy steps in and advocates for his children. When I was pastoring in Arkansas, there was a lady at church who brought me her computer several times to help her fix something. And she was a friend and brought it to me several times.

Then she said, I’ve taken it back to Best Buy. It’s under warranty. They won’t do anything about it.

I said, I’m coming with you. So nobody’s taking advantage of my church people. And I went with her to Best Buy and talked tech support with these people and advocated for her.

We know what it is to advocate for somebody. You’re going to stick up for them. You’re going to defend them.

You’re going to pick them up when they fall down. When the Bible says that the Holy Spirit is a comforter, it’s talking about in that sense. It’s not I’m going to make you comfortable and everything’s just going to be peachy.

But I’m going to be there for you and I’m going to be in your corner and I’m going to stick up for you. That’s what Jesus is telling us that the Holy Spirit does for us. And he’s there as a revealer of sin.

He’s there as someone who points out to us when we have sinned against God. He said he’s going to come and he’s going to reprove the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. He’s going to make clear what’s right, what’s sin, and what God says is going to happen about it.

Because they believe not on me, verse 9, of righteousness because I go to see my Father, and ye see me no more, and of judgment because the prince of this world is judged. The Holy Spirit is someone who lives inside of you and says, uh-uh, you’re wrong there, does that to me all the time. Anybody else ever feel that, just me?

Oh my goodness, I feel like that red light goes off in my conscience. That’s the Holy Spirit saying, you messed up, brother. You are wrong.

And we don’t always like that. That’s why I say the idea of a comforter is not to make you comfortable. We don’t like that.

The Bible says that in our natural state as human beings, we like the darkness. We like to hide because we like our sin, and yet we know it’s wrong. The Holy Spirit just comes and shines a big old light on those sins.

When we step out of line and He says, you’re wrong here. Hey, God says this. God says you weren’t supposed to do that because we know what God said, and yet we try to ignore it.

The Holy Spirit is there shining a light and banging and making noise where we can’t ignore what God’s Word says. Calling us out on it. Calling our attention to it.

And you know what? We don’t like that, but we need that. Man, do we need that.

And a teacher of truth. He’s a teacher of truth. He doesn’t just leave it at, hey, you’re wrong, you sinner.

He tells us, here’s what you need to do to fix it. Hey, you can do better. There is something better here.

God expects better of you. the Holy Spirit is not your Westboro Baptist Church. Which, by the way, they’re neither Baptist nor church, and I don’t think they’re even in the Westboro neighborhood of Topeka.

The Holy Spirit is not just standing there at your conscience going, God hates you, you’re a sinner, enjoy your sin, sinner, I hate you. He’s not standing there doing that. He’s saying, hey, you’ve sinned, you’ve messed up, let’s fix it.

Let’s do better. See, there’s an encouragement there, too, in the truth. Because it says that He will guide us into all truth.

He will show us the way to the truth. He didn’t just point out our sins and leave us there. He says, let’s move on from it once it’s dealt with.

And let me show you how to live a life that glorifies God. So he indwells us and he ministers to us on behalf of the Father and the Son as a comforter of the brethren, as a revealer of sin, and as a teacher of truth. But folks, his ultimate job is to glorify Jesus.

His ultimate job is to glorify Jesus Christ by drawing men to him and making them more like him. As we read through these verses at the end here, verses 9 through 14, we’ve already looked at some of them in depth. But he talks about pointing out sin.

He talks about pointing out righteousness and judgment. But verse 12 says, Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. But he says, For he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that will he speak.

He said the Holy Spirit is not coming with his own agenda. Really, just like the Son didn’t come with his own agenda. Within the Trinity, they have one agenda.

They have one agenda, which is to find a way to reconcile sinful men with a holy God. So he said he’s not coming to speak of himself. He’s not coming with his own agenda and his own things to say, but he’s going to speak what he’s heard and he’s going to show you things to come.

He says in verse 14, He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you. The job of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Jesus Christ. He does this by pointing out to the world where there is sin. He does this by talking about the judgment that’s to come.

The sin that means they believe not in Jesus, verse 9. Of righteousness. Of Him being righteous just as the Father is righteous.

And the judgment that’s to come. See, anytime the gospel is preached, anytime that message is preached in the world, that we are sinners who have separated ourselves from a holy God because we have been disobedient. And because of that, we cannot have fellowship with God.

We cannot have peace with God. We cannot have a relationship with God. And we cannot spend eternity with God because our sins have separated from Him.

And yet, even in spite of that, even though we didn’t earn it or deserve it, God loved us. There was nothing lovely about us, and yet God loved us because He is loving. And rather than make us pay the penalty of our sin, which was to die and spend eternity separated from Him in the fires of hell, God sent Jesus to take responsibility for our sins, to be the perfect, spotless, sinless lamb that was the sacrifice for our sins.

He took responsibility for our sins. He was nailed to that cross. He shed his blood and died to purchase our forgiveness.

And because of that, God offers forgiveness and salvation as a free gift, not because we’ve earned it or deserved it, but just because we believed that Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins. We can be forgiven. Anytime that gospel is preached throughout the world, the Holy Spirit is at work.

Using that message, using the preaching of God’s Word, and not just preaching. If you share that with your children, or your siblings, or your neighbor, not in a preaching situation, but over coffee at the table when they’re having a difficult time in their life and you’re sharing these things in a loving way, the Holy Spirit uses that message and uses the proclamation of God’s Word to convict hearts and to point out to people their sin and their need for Jesus Christ. And the Holy Spirit is constantly at work drawing people to Jesus Christ who need to be saved, who need to be reconciled to the Father. He draws people to Jesus Christ. And for those of us who’ve trusted Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit is at work within us, pointing out the sin, teaching us the truth to help us be more like Jesus.

God’s goal for us is to be more like Jesus. We were predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, is what the Bible teaches. God’s plan for us has been all along, not just to save us and leave us like we are, but to grow us to be more like Jesus.

And that’s how the Holy Spirit works. He works in the world. He works in us and among us as believers to make us more like Jesus and to the lost world to help draw them to Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is not just a force. It’s not just a power that we possess to use to our own ends. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.

He is the Spirit of God who possesses us to use us for God’s purposes. And in all of that, His goal is to glorify Jesus. So the Holy Spirit is God living within us for this reason.

And this morning, if you’re someone who’s not yet trusted Christ, if you say, wait a minute, I realize what He’s talking about. He’s talking about this sin. I know I’ve done that.

And the Bible says we all have. I have, you have, the best people we can think of have sinned against God. And if you’re sitting there thinking, I know I’ve sinned, but I’ve never asked God’s forgiveness.

I’ve never, you know, trusted that Jesus Christ paid all this for me and asked God’s forgiveness. I’ve been trying to do it myself. I’ve been trying to be good enough for God.

I’ve been trying to go to church and get to heaven. I’ve been trying to give money and go to heaven. Or maybe I really haven’t cared what God thought.

Then the work of the Holy Spirit this morning for you is to draw you to Christ. God’s desire for you is to come to Him through Jesus Christ. God’s desire for you is to stop trusting your own goodness. Stop trying to be good enough. Stop going your own way.

Stop rebelling against Him. And simply believe that Jesus Christ died to pay for your sins. At that realization, humble yourself before God and ask His forgiveness.

He will save you. He will forgive those sins. He will begin to clean you up from the inside out.

You don’t have to clean your life up to come to God. You can’t.

you come to God through Jesus Christ and then the Holy Spirit begins to clean you up and he gives you eternal life this morning if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior before I invite you to do so we’re going to have a time of invitation in just a couple minutes as our musicians go ahead and come forward we’ll have a time of invitation and you’re welcome to come talk to me if you have questions you’re welcome to grab somebody by you in the pew nobody will think badly of you nobody will think a thing about it except hallelujah and ask those questions if you’ve got questions about what that means but also right where you sit if you understand what you need to do if you understand what Jesus did for you you can believe that Jesus died to pay the entire price for your sins and ask God to forgive you and be saved and this morning if you are a believer then we need to realize that the Holy Spirit is not something we possess and use the Holy Spirit possesses us and uses us and God is within you every moment of every day to change you to clean you up and to help you be more like Jesus Christ. So when we hear that voice saying, no, you need to do this.

Or, hey, stop, don’t go there. When we hear that voice of the Holy Spirit to recognize it’s not just our imagination, it is the voice of God. And we need to pay attention to it.

We need to listen closely for it. We need to follow what He calls us to do.