© Charles A. Clough 2001
Charles A. Clough
Biblical Framework Series 1995–2003
Part 6: New Truths of the Kingdom Aristocracy
Chapter 2 – The Earthy Origin of the Church
Lesson 181 – Ministry of the Holy Spirit in Church Age, Reasons for Christian Suffering
06 Dec 2001
Fellowship Chapel, Jarrettsville, MD
www.bibleframework.org
We are going to finish the section on Pentecost and as we do I want to start by reviewing the big picture of how we’re linking these events and doctrines. Remember we talked about the ascension and session of Jesus Christ, that’s the event, and we connected that to the teaching of the judgment/salvation, that what Jesus Christ’s session did was partition the First Advent from the Second Advent, so now we have an inter-advent period. This introduces a suspension of the functions of judgment/salvation, because we saw judgment/salvation with the flood of Noah. We saw judgment/salvation with the Exodus event, and we’re seeing that same thing but split apart during this inter-advent age where judgment is primarily focused at the end of it and the salvation occurs all through it. So it’s like grace before judgment again, same pattern of how God works.
Then we dealt with Pentecost and Pentecost is the coming to the earth of the Holy Spirit as far as His operating base goes. And to that event we are associating, of course the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, we went through the Trinity in the sense that the Holy Spirit is a member of the Trinity as much as the Son is a member of the Trinity, and then we started in one by one going through some of the results of the Holy Spirit’s work, and we talked about the acrostic RIBS, a device to remember it with: Regeneration, Indwelling, Baptizing and Sealing. Each of these has an image associated with it. The image behind regeneration is creation. The image behind indwelling is the temple. The image behind baptism is a judgment, separation, identification. And sealing is a seal.
In the notes on page 51, we spoke about the two different kinds of indwelling: the indwelling of the Old Testament, the indwelling in the New Testament, and there are certain unique features. That’s why [we] do these contrasts. We want to appreciate what is unique to this inter-advent age with this entity called the Church. The Church is not the same as Israel. Israel is a nation. The Church is multi-national. They don’t even fit in the same category sociologically. And they certainly don’t fit in the same category as far as what God is doing with them. So that’s why the indwelling in that chart on page 51 is important, just to review the contrast between how the Holy Spirit worked in the Old Testament, how the Holy Spirit works today.
There are several key features of that chart. On the right side is that it is universal for all and only believers. That was not true in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament Jesus said the Holy Spirit, even to the disciples, the Holy Spirit is “with” you, He will be “in” you. He used two distinct prepositions to describe this. So that’s the indwelling. We said each one of these has a practical effect. Regeneration provides eternal life and the new nature in Christ. Indwelling provide the empowerment of that new nature, in other words, if the new nature creates the temple inside the regenerate spirit, then the indwelling is the Holy Spirit empowering and inhabiting that regenerate nature.
Now we have the baptism, and if you turn to the chart on page 53, there are the different kinds of baptisms. Baptism is a tricky word; we said the translators down through history in the English language have kind of cheated here, because they never dared to translate the word. And so all they’ve done is just take the Greek word, baptizo and turn it into baptize, and they don’t translate its meaning. The reason is because down through history there’s been arguments about the mode of baptism and all the rest of it. Furthermore, if you’ll notice in the chart in table 6, there’s far more baptism that are dry than are wet. The ones on the left side of that chart are what we call real baptisms. The ones on the right side of the chart are ritual baptisms. The ones on the left side of the chart are real and God is the agent. The ones on the right side of the chart are ritual and man is the agent. So there are clear distinctions here in these baptisms. We are looking, on the left side of the chart, at Spirit baptism. We said that Spirit baptism occurs at the time a person is regenerated. On page 54 we show that that is coterminous with the beginning of the Church, the Church began on the day of Pentecost. It didn’t begin in Jesus time, it didn’t begin in the Old Testament, it began on the day of Pentecost when the indwelling Spirit started, etc.
We’re going to go on to the sealing ministry of the Holy Spirit, page 55, and we’re going to go to 22 Cor. 1 and look at some of the verses that pertain to sealing and how this is used. The way of studying these doctrines if you want to approach the Bible doctrinally sometimes, is to look at the verses and look at what the practical problem was that was being dealt with when that doctrine was taught. So obviously here we have Corinthians. In the context of 2 Cor. 1 what is he talking about? He says, verse 7, 8, he’s talking about affliction, both of himself and of the people in the church, mostly about himself, telling about how he has been suffering. Verse 13, “For we write nothing else to you than what you read and understand, and I hope you will understand until the end; [14] just as you also partially did understand us, that we are your reason to be proud as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. [15] And in this confidence I intended at first to come to you, that you might twice receive a blessing, [16] that is, to pass your way,” describing his relationship to that local church. He’s talking about the promises of God being faithful.
Then in verse 21 he says, “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God,” so clearly the emphasis in this passage is he’s trying to build confidence, he’s trying to make them feel confident of God’s promises, God’s Word, God’s purpose. And then he adds to verse 21, because verse 21 doesn’t end as a sentence, verse 21 continues to verse 22, which is a clause that describes God. So verse 21 ends, he who “anointed us is God.” Then verse 22 is an exposition of the nature and character of God. How is God expounded in the passage? He is the one “who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge,” and the picture there is a financial transaction, it’s the idea of certainty in a contractual arrangement, a pledge. And interestingly in this passage is that God the Father, basically God here, is causing the sealing and the sealing is the Spirit, verse 22. You notice what He says, He says “the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.”
So it’s the Spirit Himself that is involved in this seal. So in a way it’s connected to indwelling. That’s why these doctrines all go together here. It’s connected to indwelling; it’s just another way of looking at it. And notice in verse 21-22 and that the Trinity is present, all three members of the Trinity are in verse 21-22. So here again you see how the Holy Spirit’s work is distinguished. Here it’s God the Father’s work, but the Holy Spirit is the seal. So the seal is the Holy Spirit.
In Ephesians this issue of the seal comes up again. The language is very similar to 2 Cor. 1:22. In Eph. 1 he’s describing our position in Christ, the whole issue of the Church; that’s the longest sentence. If you ever want a challenge in diagramming a sentence, try it. It’ll take you four or five pieces of notebook paper, all skewed on a diagonal before you get to the end of this one. And what that goes to show is the brilliance of Paul. This guy had connections; he must have been the kind of guy that was very, very personal, he must have had a very intense personality to start with. He’s brilliant; he was well-educated, probably in history he stands out as one of the top people. I really think God the Holy Spirit used his brilliance.
It’s interesting; I remember back some years ago Time Magazine reluctantly said that one of the top most brilliant men America had ever produced was Jonathan Edwards. I just about croaked when I saw that Time Magazine, of all magazines, would argue that a Christian actually could be smart. But Jonathan Edwards was a brilliant man and he was one of these Renaissance guys, but Paul, if you think about what he did, how God used Paul? He was the guy that basically started the Christian faith outside of Israel. We’ll see that more later. In the handout you’ll start to see the tremendous role of the Apostle Paul, an amazing fellow. If it hadn’t been for Paul Christianity would still be in Palestine somewhere. It was he who the Holy Spirit used as the point man in Christian missions. And he was able to argue and take on any opponent.
In Eph. 1:13, he gets to the end of this, he’s talked about the Father, God the Father, notice verse 3; he’s talked about Christ, the Beloved, verse 6; He’s talked about Christ, verse 10;, Christ verse 12; and then in verse 13 he says, “In Him,” and who is the Him, it’s a pronoun, a pronoun has to refer to an antecedent noun, what’s the antecedent noun of “Him?” It’s Christ. “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed,” notice which comes first, you can’t believe without listening, you have to listen first to get the content, after you get the content then you can believe it. “…you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, [14] who is given as a pledge,” now isn’t that interesting, that’s the same word used in 2 Cor. 1:22. See there again this ministry of this pledge.
Now you can begin to see where this is leading here. This is one of the supports of the doctrine of eternal security. This is the security of the believer, in that the Holy Spirit has been given as a pledge. He has been given as the substance of what’s going to happen in the future, the resurrection body, the eternal state, and all the other stuff, but He Himself is given as a pledge. This is the start of the work of God in our souls. It’s only a start, but it is a start of something that will continue. Notice the word in verse 13, “the Holy Spirit of promise,” and then as it continues into verse 14, notice the word pledge, “pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s possession,” really a reference to resurrection, “to the praise of His glory.” And that’s the ultimate doxological purpose of history. History has a purpose, it is not economic, it is not the proletariat, it’s not the super socialist society, it’s not the communist society, it’s not the Muslim society, it is the glory of God. That is the ultimate purpose of history.
Eph. 4:30 is over in the practical end of Ephesians and you’ll see he brings up sealing again. In these first two cases of sealing the flavor is to give Christians certainty, to give Christians assurance that no matter what happens, we have the Holy Spirit. Notice, he never asks us, never tells us, never instructs us, there’s no imperative verbs here to get the seal; there’s no imperative verbs to get indwelt. This is not an experiential contingency. This is not something subsequent to salvation; it is something coterminous with salvation.
In Eph. 4:30 he’s talking about our sinning, and he’s talking about what we do when we sin. And he says what it does; it “grieves the Holy Spirit, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” See that day of redemption occurs again, just like it does in Eph. 1:13. The day of redemption is the final finishing up. And we are “sealed for the day of redemption.” The sealing has to do with and looks forward to a delivery of us in our final state. On page 55 I quote Ryrie who said, “One of the best earthly illustrations of sealing is a piece of registered mail. When something is registered at the post office, it is sealed until delivered. Actually only two persons can open registered mail—the sender (if it is delivered back to him) and the recipient. In the case of the believer, God is the one who sends him on his way to heaven, and God in heaven is the recipient upon his arrival. Therefore, only God can break the seal of our redemption, and He has promised not to do so….” See the power of this imagery of sealing. That’s the sum and substance, that’s the power of this strong work of the Holy Spirit.
So we’ve got four works of the Holy Spirit, and we’re going to spend the rest of the evening on the fifth and sixth work. So in addition to RIBS we’re going to add two more, so we’ll have a total of six different operations of the Holy Spirit that define the Church. You can get more; this is not an exhaustive list here. All I’m doing is giving a flavor, samples of what the Holy Spirit does. So count your many blessings, at least you can count to six.
The next one is “I” for intercession, and the one after that is “SG” for spiritual gifts. So those are the two things we’re going to add to RIBS and now we have six different operations of the Holy Spirit. The major passage on the intercession is found in Rom. 8 and we’ll have to spend some time in the text and context of this passage. This is the famous passage, “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose.” Immediately prior to that promise that everyone knows, or should know, we have expounded for us another work of the Holy Spirit, which is making intercession for us. So we want to look at this.
Let’s go back up in the context just a little bit, back to 8:18 so we get the flavor. He’s talking about suffering, he says “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. [19] For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. [20] For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope,” by the way, think of the ecological implications of verse 19.
I’m always amused because in my profession of meteorology we get into this issue of environmentalism, smoke dispersion, air pollution, global warming and all the other stuff. So I run into the experiential environmental crowd. And it’s amazing to me that they’re all concerned about, like the Keota accord, you’ve heard that and everybody is against the United States because we didn’t sign on to this Keota agreement. Thank God we didn’t because it’s all speculative; it’s based on this theory that global warming is caused by man. That’s all it is, is just a theory. It can’t be proved. We’ve had global warmings before. One of the great critics of global warming, Dr. Lindsen at MIT who was the world’s leading dynamist in meteorology, he wrote the standard text that all these other guys have to study to get to their degree, Lindsen points out that we’ve had global warming before. And I think it was Lindsen—I’m not sure but I think he was the one - that made the comment that he wonders how many factories, cars, automobiles, did the Vikings have in 1000 AD that caused that previous global warming?
It may be warming, and that’s even problematical because the top of the atmosphere has absolutely zero warming for the last fifty years, it hasn’t changed a bit. So these people get all upset over all this stuff. What we ought to be upset about is the real ecological fallout of man. We didn’t cause global warming, we screwed up the whole universe, and we’re not talking about coke bottles along the side of the road here. In verse 19 we’re talking about the fact that we wrecked civilization by our rebellion against God. So yeah, we’re ecologically responsible, but see, the ecologists don’t want to admit that kind of ecological responsibility; to do so would introduce God into the scene. And if you introduce that kind of a problem ecologically, the solution isn’t a piece of legislation, it’s not a Keota accord, it’s on your knees before the Lord Jesus Christ. We can’t talk about that, of course. Therefore we don’t want to deal with the real ecological issue.
That’s the whole problem, the environment is corrupt, it’s falling apart. It goes on and says, verse 21, “that the creation itself also will be set free” will be set free, it means it’s not set free now, ecological effect of the fall in Gen. 3, “from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” See, as goes men so goes nature. Remember the doctrine of judgment/ salvation, the fifth point in that doctrine was judgment/salvation always involves nature as well as man. Think about the two illustrations of the doctrine of judgment/salvation. What are they? The flood of Noah. Was nature involved in the flood of Noah? You bet. The second one was the Exodus. Was nature involved in the Exodus? Absolutely. When Christ comes again, is nature going to be involved? You bet. See nature is always involved in this because who was commissioned by virtue of Gen. 1 to be the lord of creation, (little “l”)? It was man, and when man fell, nature suffered. And that’s why it says, verse 21, when man gets straightened out in Christ, then nature will get straightened out, and not until.
Verse 22, another comment on our ecological environment, “For we know that the whole creation graons and suffers the pains of childbirth until now. [23] And not only this” watch it now, we’re getting close to our passage, “not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit,” remember the word “pledge,” there’s the same kind of idea, the indwelling Holy Spirit is the first fruits. What was the first fruits? First harvest, the first sign that you’re going to actually have production. When the farmer gets his first fruits at least he can sigh somewhat a sigh of relief, he can get a hail storm next week but at least he’s got the crop up to the point where he’s getting some production off of it. So here again is the idea. “…we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit,” so the production of the Christian church is actually started with the indwelling Spirit on the day of Pentecost. “…even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,” comma, “the adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” We saw that in all those passages on sealing.
“The redemption of our body,” is a reference to resurrection. At this point is the time that Jesus Christ died, but as far as our personal life is concerned, this is the point when you became a Christian. When you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ in a hundredth of a second, you were regenerated, you were indwelt, you were baptized, you were sealed, and you couldn’t feel any of it. But it happened at the time that you trusted in Christ. This is your whole Christian life until the time you die. Now it could be if you lived to the rapture that you will not die, boom, you’ll go like that. But if you die, your body goes to the grave, and your spirit goes to be with the Lord; they can’t stay separated like that, so at the rapture boom, down you come and up comes your body again, and now we’re resurrected. So it’s body, soul and spirit, always.
Now the redemption of our body is this little deal, right there, so he’s saying that we have the first fruits, and it’s the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives that guarantees the resurrection, because what He starts He’s going to finish. So here’s the Holy Spirit, now its RIBS, it all happens at the time that we become a Christian. The Holy Spirit now is indwelling you, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like this. He is the first fruits of the redemption of the body. When we sin, we grieve Him. We may not be the greatest place for Him, but He is ordered by the Father to be in us. That sets the tone for this intercession thing, and I spent some time here because this is a passage you have to watch because people hit this passage driving forty-five miles an hour and don’t pay attention to the text. There are some powerful truths in this text, but it’s not going to come off unless you take your time and think your way through the context. That’s what we want to do.
Verse 24, “For in hope we have been saved”—notice it’s past tense—“but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? [25] But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.” What are we waiting for, in context? We just spent the time in verse 23, he told us. The resurrection! So what Paul is saying is during the interim of the Christian life, the period from the time we are born again until the time we die, or the rapture, whichever occurs first, we are in a contaminated environment. We’ve just gone through verse after verse of the fact that we live in a fallen universe with a fallen body, with sin all around us, and in need of sanctification ourselves. Remember “R” the whole indwelling says the Holy Spirit is in “R,” in the regenerate nature. The regenerate nature doesn’t need to be sanctified in that sense, to get away from sin. But what else has to? We’re in a constant struggle here because of the body, because of the environment, etc. and so we’re in suffering. And that’s what he’s saying. The whole Christian life, from the time we’re born again till the time we die or the rapture, all that period of time is a period of groaning and travail.
Verse 26, “And in the same way the spirit also helps our weakness,” it’s in the same way what? Well, he just go through talking about hope, he’s talked about the fact that the Spirit in verse 23 occupies us, we’re waiting eagerly for the adoption, and he says “in the same way the Spirit helps our weakness,” the weakness being defined in context as our present life in the fallen world with a fallen body, that’s falling apart, and in that sense the Holy Spirit helps our weakness, including the sin in our life. Now he says, “… for we know not how to pray as we should,” in the context, what’s the issue over which the prayer probably is about? Verses 21-24, it’s over the struggles in the Christian life It’s over the struggles of here we have one foot, as it were, in heaven and the other foot on earth. And he says, “in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we know not how to pray as we should,” presumably we’re praying over issues that we would call sanctification issues. “…we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words,” my translation says. I’ll come back to that again. Let’s finish the sentence first.
Verse 27, “and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” Now the question, an incidental question here is who is it who searches the hearts? It’s Yahweh in the Old Testament and in Rev. 2:23 that’s a title of the Son. This is an interesting thing because usually you would think the intercession would be directed to the Father, but here’s the believer, the Holy Spirit indwells the believer. The passage says that there is a prayer chain going up to the Father’s right hand where the Lord Jesus Christ sits. The Holy Spirit is making the intercession, we’re not, this is not our intercession, this is intercession He is doing for us. It says “for groanings that cannot be uttered,” that is the clause that has misled many, many people who have hit this passage too fast and don’t pay attention, because it’s usually interpreted to mean some sort of angelic language, some sort of tongues phenomena or something else like that. In other words, the Holy Spirit gets hold of you and you don’t know how to pray and so He prays through this hoopla.
If people would just simply take a concordance and look up what the words mean they never would have gotten to this because this phrase, “too deep for words” is used also of Paul when he went to heaven, and it wasn’t that he couldn’t understand what was said, the issue there is it’s not lawful. This is a word which was used, some of the word uses if you look it up in Classical Greek and the Papyri, it was used of secret fraternities that had a password, and you were not allowed, if you were in the fraternity, to talk and reveal your password to anybody outside of the fraternity. It wasn’t that you couldn’t say it; it was because of security that you couldn’t leak this password out. Think about this. Here we are, believers, the Holy Spirit is in us, that’s indwelling. So the Holy Spirit is sitting here and He knows the goal, He knows where we should be, He knows where the Father wants to take us. We don’t know how to pray regarding all the stuff in verses 21-25, but He does, and He starts making intercession for us, each one of us individually, with a secure communication.
Why do you suppose that this is secure com? This is one of these neat little truths of the Word of God. The more you dig in it, the more you’re blessed. Secure com, those of you who have been in the military know what secure communications are. What the picture here is that this praying is inaudible to us, and who else do you suppose it’s inaudible to, and cannot be found out? Satan. This is a prayer from the Holy Spirit in the middle of a satanic fallen world, praying about things, here’s believer A and believer A has a sin problem, he’s got a [can’t understand word] pattern, and the Holy Spirit is praying concerning sanctification of this little issue in this guy’s life and says we’ve got to deal with this little problem. So He passes a message up to the Son, who by the way, in relation to the body is what in the imagery of the New Testament? The head - the head of the body. Our heads and bodies are connected with a nerve system, one of the com links. That’s a picture of the body of Christ working. That’s a picture most people don’t see, but the head is connected to the body, and the com that’s going on here apparently is largely due to the indwelling Holy Spirit. He is having this secure communication with the Lord Jesus Christ concerning our situation in this world, because we don’t know, we don’t have half a clue what’s happening.
When we dealt with the fall we said there were many reasons why we suffer. I had a big long list; I said there were about nine reasons why we suffer. This is just to illustration the point. Let’s look at suffering. We categorize suffering in the Bible for believers, or suffering period, in terms of suffering that is somehow logically related, it is coherently related to something we have done, so we’ll call this deserved suffering, and we have undeserved suffering, meaning that it’s not really related, it’s sort of like that thing with the blind man, Lord did he sin; He says no, he didn’t sin. But he’s suffering, so how do you explain that. There are at least four reasons, we could think of some more but at least there are four reasons why we suffer because we deserve it.
One is we deserve it because in union with Adam we are part of the fall, that’s why we die; that’s why everybody has a fallen body, that’s why this thing is falling apart. We have, either it’s a toxin in the DNA, it’s a deformation biologically in our tissues that leads to death. I always laugh when people say I don’t believe in the death penalty. What do you think we all are under? Everybody is under a death penalty; it’s just a little sooner in some people, that’s all. But everybody has a death penalty except the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose to die but everybody else deserves to die. So number one, we all suffer because of our union with Adam.
Another reason for suffering is because of our own personal stupidity and rebellion. He that sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. If you’ve been a Christian more than two years you’ve committed some idiotic stupid thing and you’ve probably paid for it for months afterwards. That’s just the way it is, sometimes its years, sometimes it stays with you the rest of your life. Christians fornicate and get AIDS and die, the same as unbelievers. He that sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. This is not an excuse to judge people, it is not an excuse to be nasty to people, all it’s saying is that’s what the real universe looks like, because God made it that. So that’s the second reason why we suffer.
There’s another reason we suffer. You can be identified with one of these, for example, the people in Afghanistan are suffering from a war because they are identified and in their history they have tolerated a group of fools to run that country. While they personally may not have had anything to do with it, because they are Afghan tribal members, they are identified with it. The people that were in the tower that were identified as Americans in the World Trade Center, were targets of someone that hated America. So because you are identified with a family, a nation, with some other group that’s getting plastered, you get plastered. That’s part of your identification with them.
Finally, a reason for suffering is the Lake of Fire, and people who wind up in the Lake of Fire wind up there because they have rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected over and over again the call of God in grace, so deserved suffering.
We have five reasons why we get sufferings that are not really easy to correlate with what’s going on in our life. The first example, a wake-up call for the gospel. Some of you may have come to Christ through a suffering situation. So sometimes evangelism is the reason why we suffer. God hits us on the side of the head with a 2 x 4, just getting your attention, that’s all. Do we deserve the gospel? No. Did Paul deserve the Damascus road experience? No. Who decided that moment? It was God. So it wasn’t related to anything, it was that God called him, said come here, so there’s the call of God in evangelism. That’s one reason; it can often be a suffering call.
We also have suffering as a stimulus to growth; Psalm 119 is loaded with that stuff, that suffering, pressure, produces growth. And we’ve all had the experience, we’ve had opportunities to grow spiritually and we don’t take advantage of it, we goof off, put aside this, put it aside everything, and then bam, ooh, now I’m on my back looking up. He got your attention, and that’s a stimulus to grow. So that’s number two.
We have even more weird reasons for suffering. One is as a testimony to unbelievers. And unbeliever will see a believer suffering and say what are they made of, I couldn’t do that. A friend of ours in the medical profession is in a practice with a Muslim doctor. And they have exercised faith and their salary is kind of like a part time job and they didn’t know that it was only going to be part time, they didn’t have a visible means of a full salary, and this Muslim doctor is sitting there looking at them and says, boy, I don’t have that faith. That’s right, but they’re suffering financially has ministered to that Muslim. It’s at least raised a question in his head, gee, I don’t know, I don’t think I have that. Both my wife and I can testify, back when we were in high school, there was a movie around, Quo Vadis, and both independently, we didn’t know each other at the time, but both of us saw that film and both of us walked away from that film wondering, as we saw lions eating Christians, with their arms hanging out the lion’s mouth and blood and gore all over the floor in the Coliseum, we were saying man, I don’t have that kind of faith. That’s right, you’re not a Christian yet. So, a testimony to unbelievers.
Another reason: a testimony to fellow believers. 2 Cor. “Comfort one another with the comfort wherewith you were comforted.” So somebody like Joni Erickson Tada who broke her neck, is a quadriplegic, can’t do anything, what a blessing she’s been. You think you have a sore foot and you meet somebody without a leg! That’s again her testimony. If Joni Erickson Tada can handle being a quadriplegic do you think you can handle a few problems? I think so. So that’s the testimony of suffering to another believer.
Then the most weird one is a testimony to angels, and that’s found in Ephesians. The lesson tonight isn’t on this, it’s to use this as an illustration of the fact that we get into a situation. How do we sort all this out? We can’t sort all that out. These act as triggers so I can say to myself in the middle of a suffering situation that shows that at least there are reasons why I’m going through this. I don’t know what exactly is the reason, but I know there is at least a reason if not multiple reasons for suffering, and that makes it easier to bear, because now finally… God has an idea, this isn’t at random, this is not a throw of the dice that happened yesterday afternoon in the casino. This is a real plan that’s being executed; I just don’t know the details, that’s all.
That’s our situation, so that when we’re in the situation, here we go in a suffering situation. Maybe it’s deserved suffering, maybe we’ve rebelled against God and there’s an issue, so the Holy Spirit shoots up intercession to the Lord Jesus Christ. He says this believer needs this, this, and that. We know not how to pray for it as we ought, but He does. So you can see this passage in many ways is an expression of God’s love, but it can also, sometimes when something happens you can say wow, Holy Spirit, you really talked to the Son on this one didn’t you. You know, if something drops into your life and it could be just as an answer to His prayer for us.
There’s all kinds of these things going on in the background, and that’s why when you look at the text, like verses 26-27 here [blank spot] …how we’ll be all eternity figuring this one out, and we’ll have all eternity to think on this, run it by, maybe run a rerun, what was going on when that happened? Well here’s what was going on when that happened, boom, boom, boom, boom. Oh, is that what you were doing Lord? Oh, okay. So there may be in eternity these kinds of explanations that will take all eternity to see all the roots and the connections.
That is the intercessory ministry of the Holy Spirit and it’s that that is included in verse 28 when it says that “all things work together for good.” Why do “all things work together for good” in the context? Because the Holy Spirit is making intercession for us. That’s one of the reasons “all things work together for good.”
We want to conclude with spiritual gifts. The thing to think about spiritual gifts, if you want to, it may help categorize this for you, when we talked about indwelling in the Old Testament, we made the point that indwelling in the Old Testament could be a carpenter cutting wood for the temple. I said that a carpenter cutting wood, he could have been an unbeliever guy from Phoenicia, because that’s where Solomon got some of these guys from, he didn’t know anything about Yahweh God and sacrifices, he probable knew whoever the pagan deity was at the time in Phoenicia. But he had this skill that the Holy Spirit produced. Now in an analogous way, spiritual gifts occur.
There are several things to remember about spiritual gifts. One of the things to remember is that every Christian has at least one gift. That’s the first thing to remember, because it’s a gift, the spiritual gift could be seen as your place in the body of Christ; it’s sort of your function in the body. They talk about stem cells, stem cells are supposed to be cells from which you can derive different cells, you can get a liver here and you can get a lung here, and you can get something here from a stem cell. Well, the body image of us as believers is we’re not stem cells; we are differentiated cells. That’s where spiritual gifts come in. Every one of us is differential. Jesus is the stem cell, if you want to make it that way, but we’re derived from Him.
In 1 Cor. 12:11, “But one and the same Spirit works all these things,” and this is the key, “distributing to each one individually just as He wills.” As who wills? The Holy Spirit wills. It’s the Holy Spirit’s choice, the Holy Spirit partitions us; He is the craftsman that is building the body of Christ. And he says okay, here’s a believer and we’re going to put him there; this is another person, we’re going to put him down here; here’s a third believer, we’re going to put him over here. In other words, He locates us in the body. We’re not always conscious of this but what it says is He “distributes to each one individually just as He wills,” and then it goes into the body image in verse 12. He points out in verse 15, “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,’ it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body,” he goes through the foot, the ear and all the rest of it. It’s not an organization, it’s an organism, it’s the body of Christ. The spiritual gift is your place, it can be… these gifts are listed several places in the Bible. This whole section - chapter 12, chapter 13, chapter 14 - covers this thing of gifts.
One of the things to remember in the middle of all of this is chapter 13, because chapter 13 is the love chapter that is so famous in Corinthians is stuck in the middle of the gift section, which is interesting. Chapter 12 is gifts; chapter 14 is gifts and in the middle of it you’ve got chapter 13 which is the love chapter. What is his point in the love chapter? He says, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,” so there’s the gift of tongues, “but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. [2] And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” The point that he’s saying here is this: that we, by virtue of our gift set up our function. But, just because we have a special ability, that does not equate to spirituality. People often get confused about this.
He’s giving illustrations in chapter 13; he’s giving the illustration of the gift of tongues. You can have the gift of tongues and it means nothing as far as spirituality goes unless the person is walking with the Lord. A person can have a gift and not walk according to the Lord. It’s a very sobering thing and the production is zero, wood, hay and stubble; it doesn’t do a thing. So that’s what he’s talking about here, that spiritual gifts are nice to realize that they define our function, every believer has a gift, or two or three, I don’t know, the Bible doesn’t really go into the details, but the ability does not translate into spirituality. Just because you have a gift does not mean that you are spiritual. A better way of thinking about it is, a person can have a position on an athletic team and have a bad day or have a good day. They may be a very skilled player and have a bad day. Well, we can have bad days when we’re out of fellowship and we still have the gift. The gift hasn’t been taken away, the gift has been exercised, the gift has been developed, and just because we’re out of fellowship, carnal, something like that, it’s a waste of time.
He goes on and he describes some of the gifts in chapter 14, most of it talking about the temporary gifts. You notice he’s talking about the gifts ceasing, some of them. So the gifts have a cessation. We said that Protestantism believes in cessation, not because the gifts are bad, it’s simply that the gifts, once they accomplish their purpose don’t need to be repeated. There were foundational gifts. Turn to Eph. 2, we’ll go back to that because that’s a heavy church epistle. In Eph. 2:20 it talks about two offices, but they involve gifts, it says the church has “been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” Once the foundation is built, then the doctrine of cessation says that gift goes away historically. When the last of the apostles died, that’s it. Oh well you know we believe in apostolic succession, we need… why do you continue to need apostles? What was the purpose of the apostles? To generate the canon of Scripture. Do we have the canon of Scripture? Yeah, so why do we need the apostles? Are they going to write Revelation 23?
It’s interesting that every religious body who breaks off of Christianity who claims to have apostles always try to add to the Bible. Think about it. One of the largest groups in the world that talks about its apostles continuing is the Mormon Church. And in effect they’ve probably replaced the authority of Scripture, the Book of Mormon. The Roman Catholic Church with its idea of a continual life of the Popes from Peter, in essence have substituted the oral traditions of the church for the authority of Scripture. That’s why we have Mariolatry. In all these cases when people try to continue a gift and the gift has actually stopped because the Holy Spirit has stopped giving it, and they perpetuated people in positions to appear like they have these gifts, we get in trouble. That’s the fastest way the Church gets in trouble, doing this stuff. That’s why the warning is in here. We have already been established on the basis of the apostles and prophets.
There are the gifts, and we could go into all the different kind of gifts. There are teaching gifts, there are gifts of mercy; if you want a sampling of it in Romans, some of the gifts are listed. You can think about it, if you’re not conscious of your own gift… you don’t have to, you know, contemplate your navel and go through all kinds of things about this. If you say how do I find my gift, one of the best ways of thinking about it, Rom. 12:7, “if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching, [8] or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” Some of those gifts aren’t spectacular gifts, but of the all the gifts…I’ll never forget this comment one day when I was studying theology under Dr. Ryrie. He said, “Guys” - this was back in the days when we had men studying the Scripture, now he’d have to say, “Guys and gals.” He said, “You know, we can make a list of all the gifts in the Bible. You know the one that doesn’t commit you to do anything is the gift of tongues. Suppose we had a revival of the gift of giving? Oh, I’ve got the gift of giving; people don’t flock to that gift for some reason, because it obligates. Oh, I’ve got the gift of teaching. Oh, yeah, we are five Sunday School teachers short, thank you.” People don’t flock to those gifts because they commit you. But you can sit there and flap your tongue in the breeze and it doesn’t involve any personal responsibility.
There are exhorting gifts, notice what it says; it talks about exhorting, encouraging. Those gifts aren’t spectacular, but they’re part of the body of Christ. You probably have seen this in your own life; many people have the gift of encouragement. Do you know how you can often tell they have the gift of encouragement? Because when they’re out of it they really irritate you, because instead of soothing you by their exhortation they irritate you, always opening their mouth at the wrong time. But they’re exercising their gift. So think about those gifts because we all have them, and they’re God the Holy Spirit’s investment in our lives.
What we’ve done, we’ve hooked Pentecost up with these works of the Holy Spirit, RIBS, plus the intercession ministry, plus spiritual gifts, and we could go on, you can study the Bible and find a lot more, but this is just a sampling of the work of the Holy Spirit, for which we can give thanks.
Next time we’re going to start chapter 3, a whole new event, and we’re going to leave Pentecost and go forward in time to the point throughout Acts when the Church emerges as an independent entity from Israel. It’s a very important split that happens because it defines how we handle the identity of the Church versus the identity of Israel.
The question was asked when you look at Romans 8, and the Holy Spirit is making intercession, is that the only connection of praying wise that He has with us, and the answer is no, I mean He spawns prayer by illuminating our hearts, enlightening our eyes, bringing circumstances into our lives that remind us of different things, I mean we’ve all had that leading of the Spirit, all of a sudden the thought comes into your mind, gee, I need to pray for somebody. There have been some remarkable instances of that, and maybe you’ve heard about them in your life, about for some reason the Holy Spirit puts somebody on your mind, it just comes, and you have no connection. I mean, you may be driving your car down the road and you think of somebody that you met three and a half years ago or something, totally out of context. And you pray, and all of a sudden you discover wow, they were in a big mess or something happened. So that’s an obvious case of the Holy Spirit doing… so the Holy Spirit is active in a lot of other areas. I’m just saying that in that case it’s interesting and very encouraging to know that the Holy Spirit is like the unseen commander of sanctification. It’s something that no other religion in the world has anything that remotely approximates it. Nothing!
Islam has an absent deity that’s so transcendent that he can’t even speak in human language, so here in Christianity is an exact opposite; the Third Person of the Trinity indwells these bodies and is so close that He gets grieved when we sin. In the middle of, what must appear to Him to be a cesspool, He’s trying to deal with it by praying to the Father through the Son some way, praying to the head of the body, I think we need to straighten this cell out here.
Question asked: Clough replies: The question here is the idea of letting your mind drift and then sort of capturing it at the end, but the problem with that is, first of all, background. Bonhoeffer was really screwed up theologically. People admire him because he did stand up to an awful situation, you have to hand it to Bonhoeffer, he was a very courageous guy. But having said that, his theology is not impressive. But that aside, the problem with letting your mind wander is that it’s an autonomous transaction that’s being allowed to happen. The Lord Jesus Christ’s mind… let’s watch the Lord Jesus Christ, when He handled a problem of temptation, in Matt. 4, did He let every thought come into His mind, wander around? I don’t think so. He nipped it in the bud by confronting it with the Word of God. [same guy says something] Yes, take our thoughts captive. So I am not thrilled by that particular admonition, let your mind wander. I know where mine wanders.
Question asked: Clough replies: The question is when you become a Christian, [and] the Holy Spirit indwells, do you suffer for past sins? The answer, going back to the diagram that I was pointing out is that first of all, an important point, if we suffer for our sins it is not suffering to atone for our sins. That’s where a lot of stuff, if you go in Latin America you’ll see these people whipping themselves, and this is supposed to impress God, because suffering somehow in that kind of suffering I generate merit to get myself ingratiated with God. Be careful. Any idea that our suffering for our sins is atoning for our sins is a direct heretical denial of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. That’s just a preliminary. Don’t ever confuse our suffering for our own sin with atoning for our sin; Jesus alone atones for sin.
The next thing is a good Biblical model. When you deal with this kind of … we’ve gone through the framework a number of years, what is one of the most historical, there’s many, but think of some historical biographies of the Bible. Let’s think about men who suffered for sins in their lives. Who’s an example of that? David. David confessed his sin; David was restored to fellowship with God, so he and God, after he got straightened around, were okay spiritually. However, David suffered the consequences of his sin for the rest of his life. He had a son - multiple sons from multiple wives - that caused a revolution, killed each other in the final analysis, caused grief in his heart, etc. How do we respond to that? Do we go into a big fat depression? No, because God says that He will not allow us to be tempted above that which we are able.
So okay, here I am, I’ve sinned, I’ve set up consequences that are perpetuating now in my life, so now I’ve got added baggage that I wouldn’t have had had I not screwed up back here. But I’m walking around now with an extra load. So here I am, walking around with an extra load that I didn’t have before. This is my consequences of my sin back here. Now I can get very depressed over that, because what Satan will do when that situation happens, he’ll stick it right in your face, ha-ha, you’re a loser and run you into the ground mental attitude wise, and if you allow that to happen, you’ve been suckered, you’ve been suckered into something else. The way to handle it is to say there’s no temptation such as is common to man, etc. God is able to sustain me in the middle of that….
Same guy says something: Clough replies: But the thing of it is, we want to realize that the issue here goes back to our thought life, and the Scriptures emphasize the content of those thoughts, and that’s why we have the Word of God which gives us counter content. It’s not as simple sometimes as (quote) “casting out demons.” For example, can you think in the New Testament of an example of a very famous Christian who was faced with suffering in his life repeatedly, who beseeched the Lord to remove it and never got an answer? Paul, and remember what Paul did? He suffered - in his case it was a physical malady of some sort; nobody knows, some think it was eye problems - all kinds of speculation on what it was, it doesn’t matter for our discussion. Paul had this affliction. He prayed to the Lord about that affliction, it goes back to the chart again. All afflictions are not due to personal sin. And Paul’s suffering in that situation, he came to realize wasn’t so much due to some sin back here, it was due to a tendency he personally had toward pride. And he had to be reminded day after day of dependency upon the Lord. So what the Lord did, we kind of think this is tough love, kind of cruel, but the Lord allowed whatever that thing was in his life to stay there, and Paul asked and he asked and he asked to get rid of that thing, and the Lord said no, you’re not going to throw it out, you’re not going to reject it, you’re going to learn to manage it and deal with it, because in learning to manage and deal with it, you learn dependency.
I think another great example of that is can you imagine Joni Erickson Tada when she first broke her neck. If I were Joni Erickson Tada I think I would have tendencies to say Lord, heal my body and get this straight or take me home, I don’t want to be like this, a vegetable, dependent on everybody else, I can’t even put my clothes on, can’t go to the bathroom, can’t feed myself, without being dependent on somebody. And she had to work through that and look at what it’s done in her soul. She’s one tough lady that way. Suffering, you have to go back, that’s why I put those nine things on there because when you deal with these kinds of things it can be a thought that has to be challenged and sharply rebuked, like Jesus did with the devil. At other times it is a trial that comes that Satan is in back of it in the sense that he’s kind of shoving it in our face, so now you’ve got the trial itself and then you’ve got him manipulating it. So you’ve to kind of separate that out. That’s the idea of here’s the consequence, I sinned here, here’s the consequence I’m carrying, because I did this…
I’ll give you an example in PRP, there are Christians in jail. Okay, sinned back here, now I’m in jail. So now what have I got, I’ve got some problems because if I’m in jail it makes me a felon. That is a problem. When I get out of jail, how do I find a job? Who wants to give a job to a felon? That’s one of the problems we have in PRP. Some of these guys are great believers and they’ve changed their life around. Try and get them a job somewhere, nobody wants the risk of hiring a felon. So, here these guys through a real trial problem now. They know they sinned, they can’t do anything about this, they’ve become a Christian, but the Lord doesn’t take this away, it’s a consequence for the rest of their life. So they have to come to terms with this. How they come to terms with it is to take it before the Lord as a burden, but not an impossible burden, teach me how to manage this. And the Lord will do that and in fact, in doing that, managing this extra weight, it turns out often like it does in athletics. The extra weight makes you stronger and it accelerates your growth.
I can remember someone that we knew that was in a prison situation, and totally independently of whatever he did in the prison he was in, he got stuck in solitary confinement for over a year, twenty-three hours a day in a cell. He had one hour outside. In this case it wasn’t something he had done; it was a little problem that was in the system. Anyway, he was stuck in that place and we thought oh man, this is so wrong, you know, the guy didn’t do anything and why is he stuck in here, Lord what’s the story, get him out of there. The Lord didn’t get him out. What we forgot was another little problem, before he was put in solitary confinement we never could get this guy in the Word of God because he was so interested in television. Guess what isn’t in the cell in solitary confinement? Television. Do you know where this guy had the fastest spiritual growth in his whole life? The year he was in solitary confinement. Now how did that happen? So here we get all excited about this trial, the pressure and all this, and then afterwards, about two or three years later, we’re all like duh, what was wrong with us, why didn’t we see this? And he was the one that finally spotted it. I mean, after months down the road of fussing about it he finally turned around and said hey, you know what, there is a purpose in all this. So that’s the kind of stuff you have to [can’t understand word].
So the answer is, God doesn’t remove, often times, the consequences. What He does is He turns the fallout of sin which before we confess and get back in fellowship is a bang bang, it’s a chastening function, and then when we repent it becomes a growth function. He transforms His purpose.
Question asked: Clough replies: Yes, and we’re going to get into that in the next chapter. We’ve done six things the Holy Spirit has done or is doing for us. The next chapter we’re going to do six things the Son has done for us, and that’s one of them. Yes He does, He makes intercession…
[same person says something] Very good point, it’s encouraging to know that we have two perfect intercessors for us.
Our time is getting late. Look at the handout for next week, it’s going to be on several sections of the book of Acts, so look at the paragraph breakup in Acts 1 and 2, and then Acts 6 and 7, and I think you’ll be interested to see where this book of Acts goes.