Preached at Cornerstone Church in Cascade, IA on October 25, 2015
Today marks our last Sunday focusing on the Third Person of the Trinity. To be honest, I am a little sad, for there is still so much that could be said. In fact, because the Spirit is God, there is an infinite amount that could be said, for God is unsearchable.
For those who have found this sermon series on the Holy Spirit interesting and you want to go deeper, I encourage you to read “Forgotten God” by Francis Chan. You can find a link to it on our website. Also, for those who are reading through Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, there are good sections on the Holy Spirit.. Lastly, I have been reading through the Holy Spirit by Sinclair Ferguson, and I have found it extremely helpful. It is a little heavy, but not to bad.
Before we get into today’s sermon, let us briefly review what we have learned up to this point. First we learned that God is One, in three persons. We call this mystery the Trinity. One of those persons of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is fully God, yet separate in personhood. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force, but instead is a personal God. Each person of God has a specific role. The general role of the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of all that God is, or to say it another way He is the proceeding power of the attributes of God. He proceeds originally from the Father, but also equally from the Son. Last week we examined this proceeding power in the lives of God’s elect at the time of regeneration. The power of God that blows into the life of God’s chosen, birthing them into spiritual life and giving them eyes to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Without the Spirit of God regenerating us, we would never have the capacity to trust in Jesus as our Lord and as our Savior.
Today we are going to take the next step and examine the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. We will begin where we left off last week. Turn in your Bibles to Ezekiel 36:22
As I said, last week we saw that this outpouring of the Spirit described in Ezekiel is what we call regeneration. It is what Jesus was unpacking for Nicodemus in John 3. The description that Jesus used was being born again. As Jesus said, without this new spiritual birth you cannot see the Kingdom. Spiritual birth is a prerequisite to loving Jesus. This spiritual birth is caused by the Holy Spirit.
Put My Spirit within You
But, now let us ask, what happens next? Does the Holy Spirit blow out of our lives just as quickly as He blew into it? Is the new birth, the end of the story. This answer is an emphatic no. Babies are meant to grow into maturity. Look at verse 27, “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” In this verse there are two components, God putting his Spirit within you and causing us to walk. First, let us look at the first part, “I will put my Spirit within you.”
As we begin, let’s take a moment and dwell upon the immensity of this statement. “I will put my Spirit within you.” This statement is mind-blowing and is unfathomable. The Holy Spirit is fully God; meaning he lacks nothing of who God is. He is all powerful, all knowing, and all present. We on the other hand are merely created dust. We are clay in the hands of a omnipotent Potter. The distance between the glory of God and the humility of us is infinite, literally infinite. Not to mention that not only are we dust in God’s hands, but we are sinners. We have rejected God’s authority in our life and we deserve Hell, not the gift of the Holy Spirit. But yet, there it is, written in God’s unchanging Word, “I will put my Spirit within you.”
This is not the only place we see God reminding Christians that he has put his Spirit in us. It is a frequent reminder throughout the New Testament.
The reality of the Christian life is that the Third Person of the Trinity takes up residence in your heart. This is what distinguishes Christians from non-Christians. Unbelievers are void of the Spirit of God. According to Ephesians 2:2, instead of the Spirit of God they have a spirit of disobedience.
For some of you with a Catholic background, this idea of the Spirit of God coming into your heart and giving you new life is foreign to you. The religion of Catholicism does not teach Biblical regeneration by the Spirit of God. Instead it teaches regeneration by the works of man, whether it is Baptism, Communion, Confession, or praying to dead people (otherwise known as necromancy). Catholicism wrongly teaches that these religious hoops are what keep you right with God, and therefore are necessary to obtain salvation. In this type of false religion, the Holy Spirit has no role, for it is not up to the Spirit of God, it is up to the individual. I cannot think of a more scary doctrine than my salvation depending upon me. That is a recipe for slavery to the law, slavery to guilt, and slavery to failure. The truth, as proclaimed by the Bible is that the Holy Spirit is the distinguishing factor between the spiritually dead and the spiritually alive.
If the Spirit of God has not taken up residence in your heart, then you are not a Christian. It is as simple as that. It does not matter if you attend Church, or mass, every week. It does not matter if you say you believe in Jesus, for even the demons believe in God. It does not matter if you are a Pastor of Cornerstone or the Pope. The only thing that matters is if you have the Holy Spirit.
So why does God put his Spirit in us? Why not just forgive us in Christ and move on?
God, by his Grace wants to give us assurance. He wants us to know that we are saved. How does he do this? By the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God taking up residence in our heart is a seal. He is a guarantee. What is the purpose of a seal? It is to prove authorship. When a King would write a letter, he put hot wax on the latter and take his ring and press it into the wax. This would cause a royal seal. Anyone who received this letter would know it is from the King. This is one of the purposes of the Holy Spirit? God has pressed his sign upon our hearts by the power of his Spirit. The Spirit within us acts as a sign to us and to the world that we are God's and He is ours.
The second part is that the Holy Spirit, is not only a seal upon our hearts, but he is a guarantee of our future glorification with the Lord. He is a down-payment of a promise to be later paid in full. There may be decades between our new birth in Christ and our full reunion with God in Heaven. Those decades will consist of mountains and valleys; brokenness, confusion, uncertainty, and failure. There will be times that you will wonder if God is truly your Father. You will doubt his love for you, but your faith will never fail. Why? Because of the Holy Spirit. He is God's pledge to you that God will never leave you, nor forsake you. God reminds us of this wonderful reality in the book of Ephesians.
Once the Holy Spirit comes into your heart, there is no getting him out. He is there to stay. Therefore, this is another reason why at Cornerstone we believe what is called eternal security, or perseverance of the saints. This is the understanding that once you are saved through Christ, you cannot lose your salvation. You cannot be born again, and then unborn. You cannot be adopted into God's family and then kicked out. You cannot be found then lost again. Why do we say this, for many Biblical reasons, but one of them is the guarantee of the Holy Spirit. Logically, if you could evict the Holy Spirit, he wouldn't be much of a guarantee would he?
Cause You to Obey
At this point, there may be some of you in this room who then say, “If you can't lose your salvation, does that mean you can sin all you want and still go to heaven?” The answer to that question is no, but for another reason.
The second part of Ezekiel 36:27 was that God would, “cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” This is another role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He not only seals us and guarantees our future glorification with the Lord in Heaven, but he changes our behavior.
When we are born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are given eyes to see. What we see is our wretched ways, our sin, and our need for forgiveness in Jesus Christ. This understanding causes us to repent, or turn, from our life of following the ways of the sinful world, and instead follow Jesus. This is an act of the supernatural. You go from caring less about Jesus, to being consumed by Him. If someone was to ask you, “What happened to you?” You would say, “I love Jesus.” They might respond, “How did that happen?” And you would answer, “I don't know. I can't explain it. Something inside of me just changed.” This change is the Holy Spirit being put in your heart.
And this love for Jesus causes you to, not only proclaim your love for Christ, but to live out your love for Christ. The fruit of the Spirit produces in you a love for the Lord that causes you to walk in God's statutes and obey all that he commands. Jesus says this same thing to the disciples in the upper room prior to his death.
Who will obey Christ? Those whom love Christ. Why does someone love Christ? The Holy Spirit. This is why you cannot have Jesus as your Savior, but not your Lord. You can't have one without the other, they are a package deal. If the Spirit has been put inside of you, that means that you are born again, sealed, guaranteed, and will obey Christ.
To be a Christian does mean that you say some magic prayer, it means that you recognize the Jesus is the Lord of your life. He is in charge of what you do, how you spend your money, what words you say, what movies you watch, what goals and dreams you have. And this Lordship of Christ over your life is not a burden, but a joy. For you love Jesus. You want to do all that he asks, for he is your greatest treasure and you delight to serve Him.
This is something that the world does not get, especially our youth. They believe that you can claim to be a Christian, and then live any way you want. You can say what you want, watch want you want, buy what you want, live with who you want, have sex with who you want, marry who you want, live life the way you want. A life that is lived that is out of sync with God's unchanging Word, is proof that the Spirit of God does not live in a persons heart. I don't care if that person goes to their grave saying they are a Christian, if they make a practice of living independent of God's will, then they are walking proof of their damnation. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 7:21
Why were these people sent away on judgment day? They were workers of lawlessness, not workers of righteousness. The Holy Spirit was never poured out on them, causing them to love Christ and obey his commands.
No, the life of a Christian is a life with the proceeding power of God, springing out of your heart like a fountain of living water. It is a life of radical transformation from the inside out. So what is our response to this wonderful reality?
Today marks our last Sunday focusing on the Third Person of the Trinity. To be honest, I am a little sad, for there is still so much that could be said. In fact, because the Spirit is God, there is an infinite amount that could be said, for God is unsearchable.
For those who have found this sermon series on the Holy Spirit interesting and you want to go deeper, I encourage you to read “Forgotten God” by Francis Chan. You can find a link to it on our website. Also, for those who are reading through Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, there are good sections on the Holy Spirit.. Lastly, I have been reading through the Holy Spirit by Sinclair Ferguson, and I have found it extremely helpful. It is a little heavy, but not to bad.
Before we get into today’s sermon, let us briefly review what we have learned up to this point. First we learned that God is One, in three persons. We call this mystery the Trinity. One of those persons of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is fully God, yet separate in personhood. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force, but instead is a personal God. Each person of God has a specific role. The general role of the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of all that God is, or to say it another way He is the proceeding power of the attributes of God. He proceeds originally from the Father, but also equally from the Son. Last week we examined this proceeding power in the lives of God’s elect at the time of regeneration. The power of God that blows into the life of God’s chosen, birthing them into spiritual life and giving them eyes to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Without the Spirit of God regenerating us, we would never have the capacity to trust in Jesus as our Lord and as our Savior.
Today we are going to take the next step and examine the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. We will begin where we left off last week. Turn in your Bibles to Ezekiel 36:22
- Ezekiel 36:25-27 – “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
As I said, last week we saw that this outpouring of the Spirit described in Ezekiel is what we call regeneration. It is what Jesus was unpacking for Nicodemus in John 3. The description that Jesus used was being born again. As Jesus said, without this new spiritual birth you cannot see the Kingdom. Spiritual birth is a prerequisite to loving Jesus. This spiritual birth is caused by the Holy Spirit.
Put My Spirit within You
But, now let us ask, what happens next? Does the Holy Spirit blow out of our lives just as quickly as He blew into it? Is the new birth, the end of the story. This answer is an emphatic no. Babies are meant to grow into maturity. Look at verse 27, “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” In this verse there are two components, God putting his Spirit within you and causing us to walk. First, let us look at the first part, “I will put my Spirit within you.”
As we begin, let’s take a moment and dwell upon the immensity of this statement. “I will put my Spirit within you.” This statement is mind-blowing and is unfathomable. The Holy Spirit is fully God; meaning he lacks nothing of who God is. He is all powerful, all knowing, and all present. We on the other hand are merely created dust. We are clay in the hands of a omnipotent Potter. The distance between the glory of God and the humility of us is infinite, literally infinite. Not to mention that not only are we dust in God’s hands, but we are sinners. We have rejected God’s authority in our life and we deserve Hell, not the gift of the Holy Spirit. But yet, there it is, written in God’s unchanging Word, “I will put my Spirit within you.”
This is not the only place we see God reminding Christians that he has put his Spirit in us. It is a frequent reminder throughout the New Testament.
- Galatians 4:6 – “Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father.”
- 1 Corinthians 6:19 – “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,”
- 2 Timothy 1:1 4 – “By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.”
The reality of the Christian life is that the Third Person of the Trinity takes up residence in your heart. This is what distinguishes Christians from non-Christians. Unbelievers are void of the Spirit of God. According to Ephesians 2:2, instead of the Spirit of God they have a spirit of disobedience.
For some of you with a Catholic background, this idea of the Spirit of God coming into your heart and giving you new life is foreign to you. The religion of Catholicism does not teach Biblical regeneration by the Spirit of God. Instead it teaches regeneration by the works of man, whether it is Baptism, Communion, Confession, or praying to dead people (otherwise known as necromancy). Catholicism wrongly teaches that these religious hoops are what keep you right with God, and therefore are necessary to obtain salvation. In this type of false religion, the Holy Spirit has no role, for it is not up to the Spirit of God, it is up to the individual. I cannot think of a more scary doctrine than my salvation depending upon me. That is a recipe for slavery to the law, slavery to guilt, and slavery to failure. The truth, as proclaimed by the Bible is that the Holy Spirit is the distinguishing factor between the spiritually dead and the spiritually alive.
- Romans 8:9 – “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”
If the Spirit of God has not taken up residence in your heart, then you are not a Christian. It is as simple as that. It does not matter if you attend Church, or mass, every week. It does not matter if you say you believe in Jesus, for even the demons believe in God. It does not matter if you are a Pastor of Cornerstone or the Pope. The only thing that matters is if you have the Holy Spirit.
So why does God put his Spirit in us? Why not just forgive us in Christ and move on?
- 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 - “And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.”
God, by his Grace wants to give us assurance. He wants us to know that we are saved. How does he do this? By the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God taking up residence in our heart is a seal. He is a guarantee. What is the purpose of a seal? It is to prove authorship. When a King would write a letter, he put hot wax on the latter and take his ring and press it into the wax. This would cause a royal seal. Anyone who received this letter would know it is from the King. This is one of the purposes of the Holy Spirit? God has pressed his sign upon our hearts by the power of his Spirit. The Spirit within us acts as a sign to us and to the world that we are God's and He is ours.
The second part is that the Holy Spirit, is not only a seal upon our hearts, but he is a guarantee of our future glorification with the Lord. He is a down-payment of a promise to be later paid in full. There may be decades between our new birth in Christ and our full reunion with God in Heaven. Those decades will consist of mountains and valleys; brokenness, confusion, uncertainty, and failure. There will be times that you will wonder if God is truly your Father. You will doubt his love for you, but your faith will never fail. Why? Because of the Holy Spirit. He is God's pledge to you that God will never leave you, nor forsake you. God reminds us of this wonderful reality in the book of Ephesians.
- Ephesians 1:13-14 – “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is the guaranteed of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it,e to the praise of his glory.”
- Ephesians 4:30 – “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
Once the Holy Spirit comes into your heart, there is no getting him out. He is there to stay. Therefore, this is another reason why at Cornerstone we believe what is called eternal security, or perseverance of the saints. This is the understanding that once you are saved through Christ, you cannot lose your salvation. You cannot be born again, and then unborn. You cannot be adopted into God's family and then kicked out. You cannot be found then lost again. Why do we say this, for many Biblical reasons, but one of them is the guarantee of the Holy Spirit. Logically, if you could evict the Holy Spirit, he wouldn't be much of a guarantee would he?
Cause You to Obey
At this point, there may be some of you in this room who then say, “If you can't lose your salvation, does that mean you can sin all you want and still go to heaven?” The answer to that question is no, but for another reason.
The second part of Ezekiel 36:27 was that God would, “cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” This is another role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He not only seals us and guarantees our future glorification with the Lord in Heaven, but he changes our behavior.
When we are born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are given eyes to see. What we see is our wretched ways, our sin, and our need for forgiveness in Jesus Christ. This understanding causes us to repent, or turn, from our life of following the ways of the sinful world, and instead follow Jesus. This is an act of the supernatural. You go from caring less about Jesus, to being consumed by Him. If someone was to ask you, “What happened to you?” You would say, “I love Jesus.” They might respond, “How did that happen?” And you would answer, “I don't know. I can't explain it. Something inside of me just changed.” This change is the Holy Spirit being put in your heart.
And this love for Jesus causes you to, not only proclaim your love for Christ, but to live out your love for Christ. The fruit of the Spirit produces in you a love for the Lord that causes you to walk in God's statutes and obey all that he commands. Jesus says this same thing to the disciples in the upper room prior to his death.
- John 14:21-23 - “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 22Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” 23Jesus answered 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 home with him. 24Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”
Who will obey Christ? Those whom love Christ. Why does someone love Christ? The Holy Spirit. This is why you cannot have Jesus as your Savior, but not your Lord. You can't have one without the other, they are a package deal. If the Spirit has been put inside of you, that means that you are born again, sealed, guaranteed, and will obey Christ.
To be a Christian does mean that you say some magic prayer, it means that you recognize the Jesus is the Lord of your life. He is in charge of what you do, how you spend your money, what words you say, what movies you watch, what goals and dreams you have. And this Lordship of Christ over your life is not a burden, but a joy. For you love Jesus. You want to do all that he asks, for he is your greatest treasure and you delight to serve Him.
- 1 John 3:24 – “Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”
This is something that the world does not get, especially our youth. They believe that you can claim to be a Christian, and then live any way you want. You can say what you want, watch want you want, buy what you want, live with who you want, have sex with who you want, marry who you want, live life the way you want. A life that is lived that is out of sync with God's unchanging Word, is proof that the Spirit of God does not live in a persons heart. I don't care if that person goes to their grave saying they are a Christian, if they make a practice of living independent of God's will, then they are walking proof of their damnation. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 7:21
- Matthew 7:21-23 - “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
Why were these people sent away on judgment day? They were workers of lawlessness, not workers of righteousness. The Holy Spirit was never poured out on them, causing them to love Christ and obey his commands.
No, the life of a Christian is a life with the proceeding power of God, springing out of your heart like a fountain of living water. It is a life of radical transformation from the inside out. So what is our response to this wonderful reality?
- Philippians 2:12-13 - “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
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