Sermon
The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Believer
October 25, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

I'm going to ask you to take your notes. I trust that you have them. I want to talk to you just before we read the notes. As you know our series has been, during this fall season, the great doctrines of the Scripture. We talked about the doctrine of water baptism; we talked about heaven; we talked about hell; we talked about stewardship; we talked about the second coming of Christ, and we started two weeks ago on the subject the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I realized that once we approach this and I began to study that the subject is so vast we would not be able to complete it within even a matter of two or three weeks.

Over the years I've had the blessing of gathering a very large library, as you folks know I have somewhere near 16,000 volumes in my personal library, and I love to read and I love to study. And so when I come to a subject that we are going to be talking about I go to my library and I pull out all the books that I think will relate to that particular subject and then I try to go through them. But I realized that when we came to the subject of the Holy Spirit, I have about 40 or 50 books on the subject. So I started reading a number of them.

One of them was written by John Owen and I'll reference him in our notes tonight, the great Puritan divine back in the 1700s. He wrote a masterpiece, which is still considered one of the great classics of all times, it's simply entitled "The Holy Spirit of God".

I went back that far, 300 years, because I wanted to see how the church approached the subject over a 300 year span and then set the books out so that the most recent writers would be FF Bruce who taught in the University of Manchester in England a few years ago. He and his two brothers were brilliant scholars and brilliant Bible men, and just to see what he would say. And then a man who presently is teaching up in Regent College whose name is Gordon Fee. Gordon is a brilliant, probably one of the most brilliant theologians of this decade, and he wrote a book entitled "Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God", a very interesting book. He also wrote a very large commentary on 1 Corinthians, so he has much to say about the work of the Holy Spirit in chapter 14 of the book of Corinthians.

And so when I talk to you tonight and the next number of weeks, it's going to be from a historical span of nearly 300 years. I tried to draw consensus so that I kept balance, because you'll find the various writers have certain deep prejudice theologically and so they're going to emphasize that particular point, and others are going to emphasize their point. And so really I think to be honest in our search to find where we can find the consensus where all of them basically agree on one particular issue of the subject.

Now as I thought about this, tonight we're going to talk about what the Spirit of God does in the life of a believer. We're not going to be able though to cover this all because what this is going to take us into is a subject that I think probably has been neglected in this pulpit, and I'll give you a reason for it when we get there, but I want to talk about the infilling of the Holy Spirit. And I'm going to use biblical terminology, and I think one of the great problems that has happened is the misuse of words to define the work of the Holy Spirit, and thus, because of this misuse of the word, oft times we shy away from even the subject itself.

So I what you to stick with me; I want you to do your very, very best because in the next three weeks I want for us to biblically understand what it really is that the Holy Spirit wants to do in your heart and life and in my heart and life. And then we'll come to the subject of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. That will take us almost up to the first of December, but I believe with the six or eight times that we spend together on the subject you'll have a biblical view of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

So tonight let's take our notes, and I'll stick very close to the notes because they are filled with a lot of Scripture and I believe that we build truth, we build doctrine, we build our faith on the Scriptures not on what men say. So I include a tremendous amount of Scripture verses in all of our notes.

We begin at Romans 8: 1-17
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh. God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,
that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds
on things of the flesh, and those who live according to the Spirit, on the things of the Spirit.
Now keep in mind that Paul uses that word 'flesh' to designate our human natural sinful nature. So when he says flesh, he's talking about our sinful nature. He said if you live according to your sinful nature, you pay the price for it; but as Christians we walk according to the Spirit.

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.
So Paul is simply saying what we talked about last week when we come to Christ and we enjoy his wonderful forgiveness, His precious Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, comes to live within us. So if you're told by people that you don't have the Spirit of God when you are saved, and that you've got to go seek for a second experience where He comes, that's not scriptural.

Paul is saying that when we come to Christ the Spirit of God comes to live within us, and if we have not the Spirit, we don't even belong to Christ. Now let's go on:
And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors-not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
For if we live according to the flesh you'll die; but if you live by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
And as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.
For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father."
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God,
and if children, then heirs-heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

So his main theme is -- once we become Christians the Spirit of Christ lives within us, we do not live to please our fleshly desires, we live to please the Spirit of God who dwells within us. That's basically what he's saying in those verses. Let's begin our lesson.

The grand result of the Spirit's work in regeneration, and that was our subject remember last week, and conversion is described by the apostle, when he says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away, all things become new." When a sinner is converted to God, he is said in Scripture to be united to Christ. He becomes a living member of that spiritual body of which Christ is the Head: and it is from his union with Christ that he derives all of those blessings which he now enjoys as a born-again child of God. So I'm simply saying that when we come to Christ and we enjoy the work of regeneration, another term for that relationship that we now have with God is that we are in Christ.

In virtue of this union, he is identified, as it were, with Christ, and Christ with him; insomuch that he is represented as having died with Christ when He died, and as having risen with Christ when He arose from the dead. His sins are reckoned -- That is an accounting term. It just simply says our sins were shifted to Christ, and it was there at the cross He became sin for us who knew no sin. That divine accounting process took all of my sins and put them on Jesus.

So having reckoned Christ's account, Christ's righteousness is imputed to him, so that as Christ suffered his punishment, he will share in Christ's reward. He is now a joint-heir with Christ, and has an interest in every privilege or promise which God has given to His Son on behalf of His people. The legal or judicial effect of this union is his entire justification, that is, just as if we had never sinned. The pardon of all his sins, the acceptance of his person, his adoption into God's family, and his final admission into heaven, Ah, what a wonderful salvation God has planned, Christ has accomplished, and the Holy Spirit is consummating.

By being united to Christ as a member of His spiritual body, the believer becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit of God and the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit begins the life long process of making us like unto our Lord and Savior.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 says: "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are." So one of the glorious truths that takes place immediately when we are brought into Christ, in union with Christ, and our sins are forgiven, the Bible says that this human body becomes the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, the temple of God. Now that is an immense thought.

When you go back into the Old Testament, you remember that God brought Moses up onto the mountain, He informed Moses how to build the tabernacle and He gave him precise dimensions, and He told him how to furnish it, and He wanted the gate into the outer court, and then He wanted an altar and then He wanted a laver and then He wanted a place of worship -- the holiest of holies and then the holies. He told him just exactly everything. When it was all finished and dedicated, the spirit of God descended in the form of a cloud and the glory of the Lord dwelt above that place. Everybody knew that was the dwelling place of God amongst His people.

And Paul goes back to that ancient moment when the people had within their camp now a place for God dwelt, and he says in this New Testament setting, when you and I are regenerated and we've been forgiven and brought into the family of God and into Christ, this human body becomes the dwelling place of God's spirit. What a thought. And may it be that it be such a place where He is honored and glorified.

He goes on to say in any another passage, "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." So now that the spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, has come to take up His abode and my body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost, His residency there has a divine purpose, and that purpose is to open up my mind and my heart for the glorious truths of Jesus Christ and in beholding Him, I am changed from glory unto glory through the work of the spirit of God.

That means, ladies and gentlemen, that there should be a change that's every taking place within our lives since that moment we came to Christ. Because if the Holy Spirit is fully being allowed to do His work within our heart and we're not quenching Him nor grieving Him -- and I'm going to get to that in just a moment -- what will take place, is in our relationship we will understand Christ better, and in understanding Christ better, we'll be changed unto the likeness of Christ.

And it should be really true that there should be distinctions within our living and our values, and the way that we worship, and the way that we are as Christians that should show tremendous improvement over a year ago. Because the spirit of God has a purpose. Living within us is to reveal Christ to us, and in knowing Christ better and in loving Him more, we're going to become more like Him. That's His reason for taking residence within us.

Back to our notes: As the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we became more and more like Him and reflect His glory. The glory that the Spirit imparts to the believer is more excellent and lasts longer than the glory that Moses experienced when he met God on the mount. By gazing at the nature of God with unveiled minds, all of us Christians can be more like Him. The gospel reveals the truths about Christ, and the Spirit of the Lord works within us, transforming us morally as we understand and apply it.

Through learning about Christ's life, we can understand how wonderful God is and what He is really like, and as our knowledge deepens, the Holy Spirit works within us to help us to change to become more like Christ. Becoming like Christ is a progressive experience. I've underlined that in my notes because that is a key. I have to understand that once I come to Christ and His spirit now comes to live within me, it is going to be a progressive experience that's going to continue from the moment of conversion until that moment I stand in His eternal presence. It's progressive. I'm never perfect.

I've been a Christian and pastoring now for 53 years, but I'll tell you ladies and gentlemen, He's not finished with me yet. It's a progressive experience. As I come to know Christ better and the Holy Spirit works within my life, there is that continual change that's going on in my life too.

Back to our notes -- So what Paul is saying in the above passage is that we--step by step--come closer to God's perfect way of living. It occurs little by little as the Holy Spirit points out more areas of our lives that need to be submitted to God's will; and we, then, freely submit to God. The Holy Spirit works through the preaching of God's Word, through the reading of the Scripture, through our prayer life, through wise guidance of other mature believers to lead believers on God's wonderful path of righteousness.

And the progressive work of the Holy Spirit in the life and heart of a believer is called sanctification. It begins immediately at the moment of conversion and it continues until we stand in the presence, in His wonderful presence for all eternity.

Now the Oxford Dictionary defines sanctification as "the action of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying or making holy a believer by implanting within him of the Christian graces, and the destruction, of sinful affections. Sanctification is the work of free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness. It is the work of the Holy Spirit whereby we are separated from the reign of sin unto God for His service.

Now the root meaning of sanctification suggests a setting apart from which is common and unclean. The Old Testament uses the term, generally speaking, to describe things, such as instruments used in worship. In other words, when an instrument was going to be used for worship, such as pots or whatever it might be, they sanctified them. They took them out of their common use and they set them in use for something that was sacred. So the word sanctification is God taking us from common use in our living under the flesh and He separates us unto Himself for sacred living and for godly living. So sanctification is that process of taking us from the common to the holy.

Now let me stop here. I bring this into our lesson because in some segments of our Christian faith there is a misunderstanding concerning the word or the process of sanctification. When Wesley started preaching, the Wesleyan folks, they began to preach something which was really very difficult, and their preaching was simply that you can have an experience where all of a sudden in that experience everything that was prone to sin would be taken from your life, and you could be holy sanctified at that moment on. Never with the capacity to sin. Now you can imagine. So what they suggested was that you had to come to this spiritual experience whereby that extraction of sin's nature was taken from you and then you were perfectly sanctified. You couldn't sin.

Now you say, Pastor, is that still taught today? It is, but very, very silently and very subtly because they realize that it doesn't work. If you go to a Wesleyan Church or if you go to a Nazarene Church -- and these are lovely, godly people folks, this is not derogatory -- it's just that in their original teachings, their doctrine that was taught to them, they were taught that they could have a climactic, traumatic experience where the extraction of sin's nature would be taken from them and they would not sin anymore. They couldn't sin because sin's seed had been removed.

And I think I've told this story before, but I had a lovely pastor who pastored the Nazarene Church down in Colma in Daly City, and this was 35 or 40 years ago, so it's far removed from present-day. But he took a liking to me and so we'd get together oft times. And one day he came to me and he had three or four books on complete sanctification. He said Pastor Sheley can you go over these with me? He said, I've been preaching for years here at the Church, and he said, I know what I'm supposed to teach as a Wesleyan, I believe in holiness, but he said I'll tell you, it's driving me crazy because I'm not living what I'm preaching. And I remember we talked about it and we prayed about it, but he was taking it so seriously. He could not be honest and stand in the pulpit and preach in a Nazarene pulpit and hold to a view that he never had experienced. He still sinned. And that thing so bothered his mind that ultimately after twelve years he lost his mind and went insane, because he took so seriously what he preached and he realized he couldn't live it.

You can not preach an experience whereby you say that a person can come to a point of complete sanctification and all of the nature of sin is extracted from you. You can't do that. So that's the reason why I point it out. Sanctification is a progressive work. It takes place and it starts at conversion and image by image, lesson by lesson, transformation takes place. And it should be that the closer I get to heaven, the closer I get to my eternal reward, I should be more like Him than I was when I started. That's sanctification. Let's go back to our notes.

Sanctify is one of the words related to consecrate, and suggests not only a separation from but unto, separated from sin unto salvation, separated from works unto grace, separated from hell to heaven. Paul writes, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

So that transformation, that changing, that coming into the knowledge of His will and then doing it is sanctification, and it's wrought about in our lives by the presence of the Holy Spirit because it's the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes a sensitive to sin. When the spirit of God quickens us and draws our attention to something that needs to be changed and we respond, then the transformation continues and the change continues.

Now I write: sanctification is God's masterwork in the believer and this is accomplished through the work of the Holy Spirit. The new birth will be followed by a new life. Let's pause there. Do you know that because there has been such a dearth about the teaching of the work of the Holy Spirit and the progressive work of sanctification, that there has come into the church false teaching which is known as no-lordship-salvation. Now I could just take a moment and I'm not going to reveal its sources because most of us are fully aware where it comes from, but it's simply this, they teach that you can have a moment when you say Jesus...and from that moment on the teach that you are always saved, never with any ability or capacity to lose your salvation. You may come, they say, to an experience where you then make Jesus the Lord of your life in submission to Him, but they say you can come to a point of only excepting Him as Savior and never as Lord. That is a lie. But it's being taught in Evangelical Churches today.

I think one of the reasons why it's taught is simply is the neglect of acknowledging the work of the Holy Spirit that takes place. God saved us with a purpose. Placing His precious Holy Spirit within us He's to bring us to perfection, to godliness, and to holiness. And if we reduce the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, then we bring people into a false peace by simply saying, if you say Jesus is your Savior and that someday you can make Him your Lord, then they think that people will be saved. That's not true. You are not saved just by simply saying, Jesus be my Lord. There is a process that takes place because once the Spirit of God takes residence within us, His presence within us is going to make us extremely sensitive to what is wrong and what is ungodly and what is evil. If the Holy Spirit is within us that's a natural process.

Look at what Paul writes in Titus: For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, and righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works."

Then Paul writes to the Ephesians: This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away lying, "let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.

Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Notice where he drops that one phrase; do not grieve the Holy Spirit. He puts it in the middle of that list of things that we should be setting aside that marked our life in the flesh, and he puts do not grieve the holy spirit. You say, what does it mean pastor, to grieve the Holy Spirit? Well if the Spirit of God is dwelling within us, which He is if we are saved, and there come those moments in our life when we know the Spirit of God is saying, Don, don't do that. You have the check in your spirit, and you grieve the Spirit of God then you do not obey His wooing and His moving in our heart.

He is also called in Zechariah the spirit of supplication. So as the Spirit of God lives within us, and we remove along through life and He wants our life to be more and more like Christ and we come to a situation or a thing, or a habit, or whatever it may be, an act...you feel that what has been done is wrong, God has checked your path and your spirit. That's the moment you say Spirit of God, thank you for telling me, forgive me, and with Your help will never do this again.

Grieving the Holy Spirit is going on ignoring His wooing and His checking our spirit. And most of us grieve the Spirit of God because the Spirit of God makes us very sensitive to things that He wants to change in our lives so that He can grow us from image to image unto the likeness of Christ. And it's the Holy Spirit's presence within us that makes us sensitive to sin, and if we ignore His promptings we grieve Him. Now that brings us to a very serious note. I really believe that you can grieve the Holy Spirit enough where He doesn't check you on that ever again. And when you come to that point that will always be a blemish, a deep blemish; it may not keep you out of heaven, but you're disallowing the Holy Spirit to complete His work in you; He checks your spirit and you disobey.

Let's go on in our notes. So regeneration and repentance, sanctification are inseparably conjoined. A renewed heart will be followed by practical reformation, and a holy life can only spring from an inward change of heart. Regeneration is the spring, sanctification is the stream; if we live in the Spirit, we shall also walk in the Spirit; but we cannot walk spiritually unless we are spiritually alive.

Now here's what happens, as the Spirit of God is in the process of sanctifying, checking us, bringing to light what is wrong and what God wants to change in our life, then something happens there is the fruit of the spirit that grows through our lives. Now here's what He wants to accomplish: The Holy Spirit's presence wants for us to bear the fruit of the spirit.

Now remember, this is not fruits. It's not plural, even though there are nine aspects to the fruit; it's only one fruit. Ah, that's interesting; the fruit of the Spirit, and then he lists them. In other words, if we're allowing the Spirit of God now to control our lives, we are walking by the Spirit and we're seeking to let God, by the work of the Spirit, change us from glory to glory. It's going to evidence in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and all of them habitual dispositions, that is, accustomed ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Now let's take these just for a moment. As the spirit of God is changing us, the fruit of the Spirit is being evidenced in our lives. What's the love that he speaks of? Well, love is a Christian word that means incomparable benevolence. It means that no matter what a man may do to us by way of insult, injury, or humiliation...

So when he speaks of love it's a love so strong and so sacrificial that no harm, no injury, no humiliation will ever be retaliated on. You see what the Holy Spirit wants to do is He immediately wants us to change our relationship to life's situations by evidencing the love of Christ flowing through us. And Christ is our example: He's hanging on a cross, they've nailed Him, put those nails through His hands and His feet, and what does He say? Father, forgive them -- that's a godly love -- for they know not what they do.

So as the Holy Spirit is working in us, one of the things that's going to become evident in our living is going to be a love that overlooks all the blemishes and all the wrongs that others throw at us. Now that's a big accomplishment for all of us, isn't it? And that's what the Holy Spirit wants to do. The fruit of the Spirit's presence within our lives is love. You say, I've checked out on that one already.

Here again, and I'm honest with you folks, I have sometimes an anger of retaliation. I'm human! The other day I retaliated. I don't like to be made a fool of, and I don't like to be lied to, and because the lie humiliated me I retaliated. Checked in my spirit, yes. Stopped, yes, but the work of the Spirit of God is at work trying to make me respond to life's situations as Christ responded. Do you see the point?

That's the Spirit of God at work within us. And if we do not respond positively to that, we grieve the Spirit of God. You say, what are the rest of them? Joy; it's not the joy that comes from earthly things, and it's not the joy that comes from tramping over someone else. It's simply a joy of knowing who we are in Christ. Let me just take one more, kindness and goodness. They're closely connected. Do you know what it is in the original? A sweetness. It's the same word that's used for aging wine. It becomes mellow. But the idea is that the fruit of the Spirit is to make us mellow with sweetness. But boy, that's so different than most of us. The Holy Spirit working within us wants to mellow us. I like that. I say, work on Holy Spirit of God. Amen?

One more: self-control, it's the spirit which has mastered its desire and its love for pleasure. It's the virtue which makes a man so master himself that he is fit to be the servant of others. So you see, the Spirit of God comes. We become the temple of the Holy Spirit, and as the temple of the Holy Spirit, He then begins that process of sanctification in bringing us into holiness and producing fruit of His presence, which is love, joy, peace, long-suffering .

No go with me to page 6; and this is one that's a very detailed study, but I just want to start your minds thinking because we'll get to it probably next week. In the middle of page 6, I write, there is another aspect of spirit-filled living that I want to discuss for a moment. In the Scriptures a special operation of the Spirit is mentioned, by which He aids His people in the exercise of prayer.

Now, we are going to talk about something that is very, very necessary for all of us as Christians and that's our prayer life, and so I bring into our thoughts here, What does the Holy Spirit wants to do in my prayer life as a believer? Well let's read the Scriptures.

"Likewise the Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God." What a verse!

Here's another verse in Ephesians, "And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints." Supplication in the Spirit, or praying in the Spirit.

And then look at Jude, "But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."

So we don't have that as just an isolated suggestion. We find three different locations with reference to an experience of praying in the Spirit. What does it mean to pray in the Spirit? Because here I think we come to the very heart of the subject of prayer.

Because prayer is such an important aspect of our Christian life, I am deeply impressed in what it means to pray in the Holy Spirit. So I began my search in reading what many authors have to say on this subject. It's important that we come to an understanding, thus my broad search for an explanation. And I referred here to John Owen. He wrote a masterpiece, and in the appendix of his book he writes a chapter entitled: The Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer.

Now it fascinated me that Mr. Owen waited until he got to the appendix and put this subject of praying in the Spirit in the appendix and didn't put it in his 400 pages in the previous volume. Now that's interesting to me. Remember now, he's writing back at about 1732. I'll just pull from some of his thoughts.

The Holy Spirit in Zechariah 12:10 is referred to as the Spirit of grace and supplication. Paul speaks of this aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit in Galatians when he writes: Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." The two-fold testimony as the Spirit of grace and supplication sufficiently proves, that there is a peculiar work, or special gracious operation of the Holy Spirit in the prayers of God's people, enabling them thereonto. The first thing we ascribe to the Spirit is, that He supplies the mind with a due comprehension of the matter of prayer, or what ought to be prayed for; without which no man can pray as he ought.

So I'll sum it up. Here's his conclusion. To pray in the Spirit is to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal God's purpose and His will to you in being obedient. He speaks of praying in the Spirit as responding to divide revelation. Now we go on.

Dr. Buchanan, a pastor back in 1843, and he almost comes to the same conclusion. Pastor Buchanan comes to a similar conclusion with John Owen...that to pray in the Spirit is to let the Holy Spirit reveal the will and purposes of God to our mind and heart and then make us acceptable to God's will for us...whatever that may be.

Now let's consider a contemporary, Dr. Gordon Fee teaching at Regents College in Canada. He wrote a book entitled: "PAUL, THE SPIRIT, AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD." He observes: One of the more remarkable inconsistencies in studies on Paul is that thousands of books exist that search every aspect of Paul's thinking, while only a few speak of his terms with his prayer life. Indeed, most people understand Paul either as a missionary or as a theologian.

Because in our present weakness we do not know how or what to pray, the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with "inarticulate groanings", an expression that most likely refers to speaking in tongues. Now let me pause. Dr. Fee teaches in what is known as the Oxford of the West Coast; a brilliant scholar, and he says that praying in the Spirit is praying an unknown tongue. Then FF Bruce, who teaches at Manchester University, he says, "Speaking to God in the Spirit with tongues may be included in this expression, but it covers those longings and aspirations which well up from the depths of the spirit and cannot be imprisoned within the confines of everyday words. In such prayer it is the indwelling Spirit who prays, and His mind is immediately read by the Father, to whom the prayer is addressed."

And as I studied, realizing there that are differences of opinion as to what it means to pray in the Spirit of God, what I'd like to do is, the Lord willing, next week we'll discuss this more in detail, because if we're instructed to pray in the Spirit then I think it's imperative we understand what it means to pray in the Spirit. And it just may be that because we don't understand this may be why we have such weak prayer lives.

So here's our lesson tonight: the Spirit of God regenerates us, the Spirit of God comes to live within us, and we become the temple, His dwelling place; His reasons for taking up residence is to change me from image to image unto the likeness of Christ, which is the process of sanctifying us -- setting us aside from the common to the sacred. And the reason for Him being there, is His very presence when unquenched, ungreived will produce the fruit of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, kindness, faith, and self-control.

But the Holy Spirit's presence within us will come alongside of us and be a tremendous assistance to us in our prayers. The Lord willing, let's talk more about that next week. Okay?

Holy Spirit of God, we are really trying to understand Your purpose and work in our own lives, to realize that You take up residence within this body of ours and we become Your temple. That's amazing. But to know that you take up residence with the purpose to transform us and sanctify us from the common to the eternal, in the flesh to the Spirit, so that our lives show forth love, joy, peace; the fruit of Your presence.

Thank you Holy Spirit. Help us not to be guilty of grieving or quenching Your work within us. And Holy Spirit of God would You teach us, as we think about for the next days of this week, how You really do want to assist us in prayer. The Scriptures are very clear that in our own weakness we do not know how to pray, but you pray through us, and we don't understand what those groanings that cannot be uttered, we don't know what those really are. We want You to tell us, because we really do want to pray in the Spirit. Thank you Holy Spirit for dwelling within us and may our lives always make You welcome and honored, I pray, and everybody said...amen. God bless you folks, God bless you.