Ephesians 1:13
Beyond The Covenants of The Promise
Broadlands Bible Church
May 17, 2023
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Thesis: The Spirit was given for good reasons.
Introduction: In our last study, we considered that the Spirit of God was given to indwell believers because they lack the ability to discern which parts of the data that "pings" on us through all the minutes of every day is truth and which is twisted into a deceptive lie. Thus, the Spirit of God is the
Teacher (see 1 John 2:27 in context -- notably 2:20) Who
guides us into Truth.
So, at this point, we have these answers to our question of why the Spirit of God has been given to us: first, without the Spirit we have a fundamental incapacity problem that corrupts all of our activities; second, without the Spirit we have a distance problem that permits our attention to be shifted off of Christ; and third, without the Spirit we have an ignorance problem that keeps us from being able to discern between error and Truth. The Spirit of God is the powerful Spirit Who enables righteous behavior; He is the indwelling Presence that enables a legitimate focus of attention; and He is the powerful, indwelling Teacher Who guides us into Truth and challenges our confidence in error. Now, since the Spirit of God is the Provision for all of these needs, why is it so that many of the people who are indwelt by Him are still characterized more by carnality than godliness?
I would like to suggest that a part of the answer is heavily involved in methodology. The question here is this: how is the Spirit of Christ released in us and by us so that He is free to manifest the life of Jesus through the members of our body? In a sense we have already answered this question in the first two studies of our overall question. We said last week that anyone who has a grasp of their inadequacy and His adequacy and who has his/her eyes on Jesus as opposed to the surrounding circumstances can walk by the Spirit. As Teacher, the Spirit continuously exalts the adequacy of Jesus as a counterbalance to our inadequacy and He continuously exalts the Person of Jesus as a counterbalance to our surrounding circumstances. This means that our inadequacies and our circumstances are always with us...just as the Spirit of Jesus is always with us.
So, this evening we are going to talk method.
- I. When It Comes to Method, the New Testament Consistently Addresses One Issue: Faith.
- A. The faith issue has a fundamental focus of content.
- 1. Galatians 3 ties the reception of the Spirit to one doctrinal premise.
- a. The doctrinal premise is this: Christ was crucified.
- 1) The crucifixion addresses two fundamental realities...
- a) We are sinners by nature before we are regenerated...so that we cannot redeem ourselves.
- i. This inability arises from a lack of desire for regeneration [regeneration presupposes a desire for reconciliation with an Enemy].
- ii. This inability arises from a lack of ability to regenerate ourselves [like Nicodemus, we cannot enter again into our mother's womb and start all over -- and even if we could, it was in that womb that we got the twistedness of our nature].
- b) We are loved by God in spite of our natural state.
- i. He was not put off by the magnitude of our wickedness.
- ii. He still isn't [He does not love us less now that we are redeemed].
- 2) The crucifixion is a non-sensual truth-in-history that is before your eyes while not being before your eyes.
- a) This truth-in-history reality is not a sensually verifiable fact.
- i. Even those who saw Jesus crucified did not, for the most part, see Christ crucified [to see Christ crucified meant that one believed that Jesus was Christ].
- ii. That Jesus is Christ is not a sensually grasped fact: Matthew 16:17.
- b) It only becomes a before your eyes truth by the work of persuasion of the Holy Spirit in concert with the proclamation that it is true.
- i. The point here is this: those who believe that Christ has been crucified believe it, and those who do not, do not.
- ii. The Spirit convinces men of this truth in order that He might enter into their bodies.
- 2. This reception of the Spirit into one's body is fundamentally definitive regarding method.
- a. In Galatians 3 Paul calls the reception by faith the beginning that is supposed to define the on-going method.
- b. So, what is the method?
- 1) It begins outside of ourselves and our bodies as God sponsors the coming of His word to our hearing [the Galatians had nothing to do with Paul's coming and preaching--i.e., it was not of their works that the Word came].
- 2) When the Word comes, it is attended by the persuasion of the Spirit [1 Thessalonians 1:5] as God sponsors the hearing of faith.
- a) Not all preaching of the Word is preaching of the Word: Hebrews 3 & 4 [Today, if ye hear His voice...].
- b) Not everyone who hears the Word hears the Word [...he that hath ears to hear, let him hear...].
- 3) When the persuasion of the Spirit is present, man's responsibility is to cease his resistance to the obvious truth.
- a) The demand for proof is simply a method of resistance.
- b) The demand for convincing intellectual argument is another method of resistance.
- c) The demand for answers to tangential questions is another method of resistance.
- d) Man, at this point, not only knows the proclamation is true, he knows he is resisting it.
- e) Biblical faith is simply ceasing to resist the obvious.
- 4) When man believes, i.e., he ceases to resist the obvious, the Spirit is free to produce the testimony of Jesus through the now-available body of the one who is believing.
- 5) This is the methodology of the Spirit.
- B. The faith issue has a fundamental foundation.
- 1. Faith is always corrupted by any appeal to the goodness of human activity that is divorced from the indwelling Spirit of goodness.
- 2. Faith is always corrupted by any resistance to the personal love of God for the person resisting.
- C. The faith issue has a fundamental methodology.
- 1. Anytime a person knows he is on the losing side of an internal argument, he knows he is resisting Truth.
- 2. Anytime a person yields to the obvious, he is making his body available to the Spirit for His manifestation of the life of Jesus.
