The One Who Indwells

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 1 this morning. Ephesians chapter 1. Excuse me.

Yesterday I had to go into the city because I had promised my mother that I would install some security cameras for her that she’d bought. And I had some other things to do. I picked up a lawnmower, a whole nine yards.

And I decided to give Charla as much of a day off as possible. She still had Charlie because I can’t do anything to feed him. But she still had Charlie, but I decided to take the older two with me.

And so while I was working, the kids hung out with my parents and my sister and hung out there with them at the house or went running around with them. And after I got home last night and got everything unloaded and got the kids in bed and finally just kind of collapsed into the chair, my phone goes off. And my mother was asking me, do you want to hear what your children were singing in the car as we were driving to the store?

And I said, I’m not sure I do. You never know how to answer that question. And she said, well, they were singing.

I can’t remember what she said. The name of the song was. She said at one point they were singing, Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit.

Oh, Holy Spirit. I don’t know what I’d do without the Holy Spirit in my life. And I thought, where did that come from?

because we’ve talked about the Holy Spirit some, and I’m preaching through a series of messages on the Holy Spirit, but I haven’t really been talking about it at the dinner table, what I’m working on, so all I can figure is maybe the Holy Spirit put that there as an object lesson, because whether they understood what they were singing or not, it’s true. I don’t know what we do without the Holy Spirit. And when I started talking to you about this last week, I begin by pointing out that we as Baptists a lot of time ignore the Holy Spirit.

We believe as a matter of doctrine that he’s the third person of the Trinity. We believe that he’s God, that he’s the Spirit of God. But a lot of times for practical purposes, we pretend like the Holy Spirit’s just not even there.

And for whatever reason, maybe we don’t want to, maybe it’s uncomfortable. Maybe we’ve never been taught about the Holy Spirit. Maybe we just want to distance ourselves from some of those other churches who are just a little too excited about the Holy Spirit.

I don’t know what our deal is, but we treat the Holy Spirit like he’s not a factor in our lives, whether we think about it in those terms or not. We don’t think that much about the Holy Spirit, but the fact is, I don’t know what we would do without him. He’s always there.

He indwells us, I believe, from the moment of conversion, from the moment that you are born again, the Spirit of God indwells you and begins to teach you and begins to guide you and begins to lead you. And we’re going to talk about the leading and the guiding and all those things over the next couple of weeks. Last week we talked about how He convicts the world of sin.

Today I want to talk about just the very fact that He indwells us, just the very fact that He is with us. This morning, you may feel like you are distant from God or God is distant from you. If you don’t feel that way today, odds are you have felt that way at some point in your life, or you will.

We all go through those valleys where we feel like God can’t hear us, God’s not with me, God doesn’t even notice me at this point. We feel that way, but if you’ve ever been a teenager, you know your feelings can lie to you. Your feelings can mislead you.

So if you were ever a teenager, you probably understand that. Our feelings mislead us. We can feel like God is distant.

We can feel like God is far away. We can feel like God doesn’t have a clue what’s going on in my life. God doesn’t care.

But let me tell you, the Bible says that the opposite is actually the case. Regardless of what we feel, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ this morning, if you have trusted in Christ for your salvation, if you have been born again by grace through faith, then you are indwelled this morning with the Holy Spirit of God who will never leave you, who is always there. You can’t get rid of him.

Not that you would want to, but you can’t get rid of him. And what that means, it’s not just, we’ve talked about this a little bit too, the Holy Spirit, it’s not just any other spirit, it’s not just some force that’s there with you. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead.

It is God the Spirit who resides within you. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty incredible, that God the Spirit would take up residence inside of us. We talked a little bit on Wednesday night about, or it might have been the Wednesday night before, about why Jesus had to leave, why Jesus had to ascend to heaven.

And there are probably a lot of reasons, and probably a lot of reasons I don’t know or understand, but the one that comes to my mind is he’s talking about it’s needful for me to go. He’s telling his disciples, I need to go because if I go, I’ll send the comforter. Jesus, God the Son, came and took on human flesh, and that human flesh meant that he was in one place at a time.

And so for you to have, for you to commune with God, so to speak, today, if Jesus was still walking the earth, we would have to travel to Jerusalem, and we’d have to press in through all the crowds to try to get close to him, or cut a hole in the roof, as somebody did, to lower their friend down just to get to Jesus. But the Holy Spirit has no body. The Holy Spirit has no flesh and no bones and no blood.

The Holy Spirit is able to be everywhere at once. And so we don’t have to travel to visit with God on earth. He’s here.

He’s here with us. He’s here among us. He’s here in us.

Just the same as He is the believers at the church up the road. Just as He is in the believers in a church clear across the world. Just as He is with the underground believers in countries today where they’re persecuted for their faith and can’t be open about it.

God the Holy Spirit is there with them and among them and in them, and today there are people who are in prison for their faith in other parts of the world, and He’s even there with them when they are totally alone. The Holy Spirit of God is able to be within all of us. Let’s look at Ephesians chapter 1 and what Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says about this.

Starting in verse 11, he says, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance. He’s talking about Jesus here. In whom we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.

Don’t be thrown by that word predestinated. That word is used a few times in the New Testament. And I hear people talk about, well, I believe in predestination.

I don’t believe in predestination, blah, blah, blah. We should all believe in predestination. It’s taught in the Bible.

It’s just a matter of what we’re predestined to. Some people will read those verses. Some people, way smarter than I am, will read those verses and conclude that God has predestined some to heaven and some to hell.

That is not what I believe predestination is from the Bible. Every time I see the word predestination, he’s talking about us being more like Jesus Christ. So in this passage, he says we’re predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will. He just says we have obtained an inheritance.

In Romans, when he says we’re predestined, he says we’re predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. I interpret these things not to mean that some are predestined for heaven and some are predestined for hell, and some people can’t get saved and some people must get saved. I don’t understand that that’s what the Bible is talking about at all.

It sounds to me like he’s talking about being predestined to the result of salvation, meaning that it has been God’s plan all along, before the world was even created. Not only did God decree the plan of salvation, but it was God’s plan all along from before anything began that not only we should be saved, but that anybody who was saved, he would give an inheritance in heaven and he would make us to be more like Jesus Christ. It’s not salvation and who’s going to be saved that’s predestined. I understand the Bible to teach that it’s saying the saved are predestined to be sanctified.

So don’t let that word trip you up. Predestination is taught in the Bible. It’s just a debate over what the predestination is to.

So it says, In whom, in Jesus, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. In other words, God comes up with the plans. God only needs to consult himself because it’s all according to his wisdom.

That we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ. So again, it’s talking about being predestined to follow Christ, to be more like Christ, in whom ye trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believed. He’s talking about all these things that came from belief. The fact that we believed in Jesus Christ and now we’re predestined to have an inheritance in Christ. We are predestined to be more like Christ. He’s talking about all these things.

And then after you believed, he says, at the end of verse 13, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise. He says after that belief, when that change took place, there was a seal that was put on each of our lives, which was the Holy Spirit. When you believed in Jesus Christ as your Savior, those of you in this room who have, when you first trusted in Jesus Christ as your one and only Savior, when you first realized you’d sinned against God and needed somebody to pay for your sins, and that only He could do it, and that He paid for it in full, and that He rose again from the dead to prove it, when you first asked God’s forgiveness with that understanding, you were at that point sealed to God by the Holy Spirit.

And he goes on to say in verse 14, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of his glory. Okay, so he talks about the Holy Spirit being an earnest, a down payment of our inheritance. The proof that God is going to come and redeem us until the redemption of the purchased possession.

God has already purchased us. God has already purchased us with the blood of Jesus Christ, but the possession has not been completed in the sense that He has not taken us to heaven. The entire promise has not been yet fulfilled.

It will be, but it hasn’t been yet fulfilled. For those of us who are still on this side of eternity and still breathing air, we have not seen the final fulfillment of all the promises of God that we would not only have our sins forgiven, which we’ve experienced here, and we not only have a relationship with God, which we experience here, but that we would experience eternal life with Him in heaven, that part of the promise has not yet been fulfilled. So what proof do we have that He’ll do it?

The Holy Spirit is the earnest. And we’re going to stop there this morning as far as verses. I want to talk to you a little bit more about what these mean, because I’ve read these verses for years. I thought I understood them, and it’s not that I was wrong in my understanding.

I think it’s that I was incomplete in my understanding, because as I’ve studied them out more in the last couple weeks, I’ve learned some things that I think are pretty neat. So what we need to understand about the Holy Spirit and His role in our lives is that, at least in terms of Him being somebody who indwells us, who lives within us, is first of all, the Holy Spirit stamps us with God’s seal. He stamped you as a believer with God’s seal and says you’re under God’s protection and that you belong to God. You know, sometimes you’ll see equipment or something expensive that says it’s stamped with property of.

I have a filing cabinet in my office at the house that says property of Southwestern Bank. I did not rob the bank. That was the bank my dad worked for for many years, and they got new filing cabinets and sold them.

They forgot to take off the property of sticker before they sold it to me. And so it should be stamped property of Jared, but I guess it still says property of Southwestern Bank. People do that because if it gets stolen or if it gets misplaced, they want people to know where it belongs.

We have 87 pairs of scissors at our house because my wife, like me, was a teacher except my wife, well, I have my things that I obsessively collect too, but hers are office supplies. We have had to buy very few school supplies for the kids in the last couple years because we have a whole closet full. And of these 87 pairs of scissors that we have, all of them say Castile on the handle.

That’s her maiden name. Because at the school, if a student needed to use scissors and then accidentally walked off with them and they ended up in somebody’s locker or somebody else’s classroom, or if she lent them to me, she wanted to make sure she got them back. they were stamped property of charla castile okay because she wanted everybody to know those are mine the holy spirit does the same thing for you by stamping you and saying you are gods you you not you are g-o-d-s but you’re g-o-d apostrophe s that you belong to god that you as a believer are his property I know we don’t like to think of ourselves as being property but think about it sort of like in the life of Job.

Job was stamped as belonging to God. And we know that Job suffered a great deal. But look, Satan, before he could mess with Job at all, had to come to God for permission. Why?

Because God said, that’s my servant Job. And the same marking rests on you. You belong to God, and nobody can do anything to you without God’s approval first. Now, that doesn’t mean that that doesn’t mean that everything’s going to always be wonderful.

Nobody can ever do anything wrong to us. Sometimes God will allow bad things to happen to us. So that mark of protection on you, the seal of the Holy Spirit that you’ve been stamped with, doesn’t mean you’ll never have trouble.

What it means is that when you have trouble, guess who’s always in control? Because they couldn’t even get near you. Satan couldn’t even get near you.

But for God saying, okay, but you can only go this far. And even when we’re tried, and even when we face tribulations and struggles, and we think, oh my goodness, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen. We don’t realize, but it could be so much worse if God wasn’t standing there saying, no, you can’t go any further than this.

Not only that, nobody can ever take you away from God. Nobody can ever, nobody can steal you from God. Jesus said, those who belong to me are, no man shall pluck them out of my hand.

And you and I are in the hands of God, and we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. Nobody can take us away from God. Nobody can steal your soul out of his possession.

Nobody can steal your salvation from you. You are sealed with the Holy Spirit. He says this in verse 13, in whom after that you believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.

As I said, this is a mark of security. It’s a mark of belonging. I learned a few interesting things when I went digging into this word, though, because this word is used a few times, the Greek word is used a few times in the New Testament.

The word is spragizo, and I discovered it’s the same word that Matthew used when he was describing how they sealed up the tomb when Jesus was buried. When they went and sealed up the tomb, they spragizo’d it, and I realize that’s not good Greek grammar, that’s English, but they sealed it, this same word, the seal that was placed on Jesus’ tomb, they sealed it up, and then they placed Roman guards outside of it. And so what they were doing was making sure this tomb was utterly secure.

They wanted to make sure that nobody was going to break in and steal the body of Jesus Christ. And so if you want to make sure it’s secure, if you want to make sure nobody can break in and steal it, you for Jesus, okay? You seal it up, you put a guard out front, and nobody’s getting in there. Now the problem is they didn’t count on Jesus being God.

So no person, no man is going to get in there and steal the body. No group of disciples who really are just depressed and they’ve cut and run because they think everything is over with and had no motivation to steal the body. Either way, they’re not getting in there to steal that body.

There was no force on earth that was going to get that body out because it was sealed. They, however, didn’t account on Jesus being God. So when it says Matthew 27, 66, So they went and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone and setting a watch.

They didn’t realize that God could still get out. But that word used there is interesting to me because we are sealed with the same word, and that word describes when they wanted to make sure it was absolutely locked down tight like Fort Knox. That’s the word they used.

It’s also the word that’s used in Revelation chapter 7 several times throughout that chapter to describe the 144,000 from the 12 tribes of Israel who were going to be witnesses of Jesus Christ in the time of tribulation, if I’m understanding the timeline of it all correctly. There’s 144,000 Jews who are going to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior during the tribulation, and they’re going to be witnesses of him. And it says in the Bible, the angels are talking about putting the seal on them so that no man can hurt them.

As all this tribulation is going on, the chaos of it all, and the earth is just in total upheaval, they’re talking about putting a seal on them so that no man can hurt them. And that’s the same kind of seal. It’s the same word describing the Holy Spirit. To make sure that they’re marked in the midst of all this tribulation, in the midst of all this chaos, that they are marked as belonging to God, and nobody can do anything to them.

It’s the same word that’s used for us. It’s the same word that John uses later in Revelation when he describes the seal placed on Satan for a thousand years to keep him bound so he can’t come out and cause any trouble until God says so. In Revelation chapter 20, Satan is pretty powerful, and yet that word for Jesus was used when they want to seal him up for a thousand years.

Yes, he’s going to come out later, and there’s going to be a final showdown between good and evil, between God and Satan, and God wins. I don’t, spoiler alert, God wins in the end. And God casts him forever and ever and ever into the lake of fire.

But he only comes out of that seal. He only comes out of that spragizo because God lets him out. Even Satan himself cannot break the seal. So I’m telling you that not to give you a Greek lesson today, but to help you to understand the strength of this word. When Paul writes that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, It’s not just a little seal like you put a sticker on an envelope to keep it closed in the mail.

We’re talking a serious seal that cannot come off, that cannot be broken, that no man can penetrate. And what they did to try to keep the disciples out of the tomb, and what they placed on the 144,000 to keep them safe in the tribulation, and what they used to seal Satan inside a pit for a thousand years where nobody could bust through. It’s the same word that describes.

. . I’m not saying it’s the same seal, but it’s the same word that they used to describe the seal of the Holy Spirit on you.

And what that teaches me is that we’ve been stamped with God’s seal and we belong to Him and that Holy Spirit that lives within us is proof that no man can ever take us away from God. And that this morning, if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, you are utterly and completely secure in Him and the Holy Spirit is proof of that. we move on to verse 14 and the beginning of which he calls the holy spirit the earnest of our inheritance and this verse tells me that the holy spirit assures us that god keeps his promises the holy spirit assures us that god keeps his promises I didn’t know you know I’ve read this verse for years I didn’t know what an earnest was until I was in my mid-20s and went to buy a house and I went to buy my first house in Norman which I still unfortunately own and I had to put down five hundred dollars in earnest money.

A friend of mine was the realtor. I said what what is this what do I have to do this for and he said well you know if you do a contract with them until it’s fulfilled you know they’re taking the house off the market they’re excluding other potential buyers and so they need some assurance that you’re serious and that you’re going to follow through So you put in this $500 of earnest money. They take the house off the market, sign a contract, and it goes toward the house, depending on the way it works.

It either goes toward the price of the house or you get it back when the transaction is complete. Either way, you don’t lose it unless you just walk away and say, I changed my mind. I don’t want the house after all.

That’s to give them some assurance that you’re going to follow through with the contract. Because I don’t know about you, but I like $500. I don’t want to lose $500.

So I put that as an earnest on the house that I bought in Norman. About a year after I bought that house, God called me to move to Arkansas. And I thought, why did I just buy this house?

Because I’ve lived in this house for nine months, and now I own the house. I had to put $200, I believe, as the earnest on the house in Arkansas. And I thought, well, that’s a great deal. This is a more expensive house, and I only have to put $200 down on it.

That was assurance to them that I was going to fulfill the contract. When I got ready to sell the house in Arkansas to move back here, my real estate agent told me, you know, here are the terms of the contract that the buyers have agreed to. And I said, where’s the earnest?

Oh, they don’t do that anymore. It’s been three years. You’re telling me the entire structure of real estate in America has changed in three years.

Oh, they don’t do that anymore. I said, well, what assurance do I I almost didn’t, if I hadn’t needed to sell the house quickly, I wouldn’t have agreed to it. Because I said, what assurance do I have that they’re going to follow through on this?

I mean, I was a nervous wreck until the transaction was completed, because I had no earnest. I had no assurance. I had no promise. Well, he says that the Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance.

We have not received our full inheritance yet as believers in Jesus Christ. Again, we’ve received forgiveness of sins. We’ve received a relationship with God the Father. But we haven’t received the eternal life.

I mean, we haven’t. . .

Well, that’s a tricky way to put it. We haven’t received heaven yet. I’ll put it that way.

We haven’t seen the eternal life with our own eyes. I believe that I have eternal life now because of what Jesus told me. Because of what Jesus says in his word.

But I haven’t seen heaven yet. The assurance we have is the Holy Spirit. That God is saying this is the earnest of your inheritance.

This is the proof that I’m going to follow through on the transaction. I have left my Holy Spirit there with you in the meantime. And there’s another Greek word in here.

And I can’t pronounce this one, so I’m not going to try it. It’s trickier than sphergizo, I’ll tell you that. And I was looking at the places where it’s used.

The word for earnest is used in the Bible. And it’s used three times in the New Testament. and said the related word in Hebrew, which I know nothing of Hebrew at all, is used three times in the Old Testament.

So what I did was I looked at the Greek translation of the Old Testament that they would have used in Jesus’ day, and lo and behold, it’s the same word all six times. What’s interesting to me is that the first three times it’s used in the Old Testament are all from the same story that you might be familiar with, you might not, because it’s kind of icky, it’s not a story that I learned. Let me say the behavior of the people is kind of icky.

Proper theological, technical term for you there, icky. I learned about this story in high school and was really repulsed, but it shows you God can use anybody. The first three are from a story in the Old Testament.

In Genesis chapter 38, there’s a man named Judah who was one of the sons of Jacob, and he was a brother of Joseph. He was one of the ones who was involved in selling Joseph into slavery. Not a good guy, far from a righteous man.

according to the Bible. So in Genesis chapter 38, he goes to visit a prostitute, gives you some other idea of his character. He goes to visit a prostitute who unbeknownst to him is his daughter-in-law, who he has not treated well, and he’s not fulfilled all the family obligations to her and just kind of sent her with nothing back to her family.

So unbeknownst to him, it’s his daughter-in-law. He’s out of town. He thinks, I’ll go visit a prostitute.

Bad move. So while he’s on this journey, he sees her. He offers to pay her with a goat, because apparently that’s what they did back then.

The problem was he didn’t have a goat with him. And so rather than relying on the natural trustworthiness of men who will go and commit adultery, she says, I want some assurance that you’re going to bring me back a goat. And so he has to leave her there with his ring and his bracelet, some translations say a cord, which would be something he wore around his wrist, and his staff, his walking stick.

These were his promise that he was going to come back. Now the interesting part of the story, it gets even more interesting, is that she becomes pregnant by him. And when he finds out that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he’s ready to have her stoned, And he’s asking, who’s the man who did this to you?

You know, we want to get him too. And she produces the ring and the bracelets and the staff and says, it’s the guy who this belongs to. And he goes, oh, well, I’ll take those and we’re done here.

That’s kind of his attitude. But the Bible describes it. And by the way, if you’re thinking, this kind of stuff is in the Bible.

God’s not saying this is a good thing. Okay. God, God, God had Moses, I believe, record these stories as things that really happened.

These are the real sins of real people, and look how God worked in their lives anyway. And by the way, here’s an example. Don’t do this.

But three times in that story, the word earnest is used, or the Greek word, the Hebrew word there for earnest is used, and it describes this bracelet ring and staff. Because he was going to want these things back. He was going to need these things back.

And so for her, the only way she was going to know for sure she was going to get the goat that she was owed was for her to take these things because he’s going to want those back. And so he would have to come and bring her the goat and get these things back. And so those were proof to her that he was going to fulfill his promise.

Now that’s not a great story, but it helps us understand the meaning of an earnest in the Bible. The other three times that the word is used are all in the New Testament, and they’re all used to describe the Holy Spirit. Here in verse 13, where it says, the Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance.

2 Corinthians 1 says, For all the promises of God in Him are yea, which means God will always keep His promises. And in Him, amen. By the way, the word amen means let it be so, something along those lines.

It’s not just agreement. It’s saying, what is it, the king and I, where he says, is it the king and I or the Ten Commandments? I can’t remember where he says, so let it be written, so let it be done.

Ten Commandments, isn’t it? Anybody seen either of these movies know what I’m talking about? Anyway, I think it’s the Ten Commandments.

The Pharaoh always says, so let it be written, so let it be done. That’s what Amen means. So for all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him I am in unto the glory of God by us, meaning God will keep his promises and do what he says.

Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ hath anointed us as God, who hath also sealed us and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. So again, he’s talking about earnest, and he’s saying the Holy Spirit is the proof that God is going to keep his promises. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, four chapters later, says, For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened.

It’s talking about the earthly body, the earthly tabernacle, and waiting to go to the heavenly tabernacle, the glorified body, says, for we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life. So in other words, we’re just waiting for eternal life. Now he that hath wrought for us the selfsame thing as God, the one who has given us this, is God, who hath also given unto us the earnest of his spirit.

So every time in the New Testament that phrase is used, That word is used. It’s talking about the Holy Spirit. So every bit as much as Judah’s ring and bracelet and staff were an earnest, proving that he’d come back and pay his debts and fulfill his promises, so the Holy Spirit has proved to you and me that God will fulfill every promise that he’s ever made to us.

We look a little further in verse 14, which is the earnest of our inheritance unto the redemption. Focus on this. Until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of his glory.

It tells us the Holy Spirit proves that God will never leave us or forsake us. We know in His Word, He says He’ll never leave us or forsake us. And just in case God’s own promise is not proof enough for you, He gives us this extra proof that He’ll never leave us or forsake us.

How can He when He’s within us? The Holy Spirit, as I said at the beginning of this message, isn’t just some spirit. It’s not just some force.

We’ve been talking about cults a little bit on Wednesday nights, and there are some cult groups who teach the Holy Spirit as kind of like radio waves. You know, it accomplishes something that God sends it out to do, but has no personality or mind or will. That’s not what the Bible teaches.

The Holy Spirit can be grieved. The Holy Spirit can be quenched. You know,