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[0:00] I am usually behind the guitar, and it's kind of a security blanket for me, so I hope that you'll be in prayer for me, even as I speak.

[0:10] I appreciate Alex's encouragement, that song, words of power that can never fail. Let their truth prevail over unbelief.

[0:20] My prayer is that that's exactly what would happen today prevail over my unbelief and yours. Our text is Romans chapter 8, verses 9 through 11.

[0:35] Now, a couple of weeks ago, John said he felt like the varsity was winning, so now the JV team was stepping in. That was two weeks ago, so I don't know what that says about me exactly.

[0:46] But I am really excited to get to talk with you about this text. Even this morning, I was trying to find things that I could take out of my sermon, because I don't want to take all of your whole afternoon.

[1:01] There's just, as we begin to talk about the Spirit, there's more than we could possibly cover in a morning or a week. So I hope that this will be a foundation and a catalyst, and that you'll want to get more acquainted with the Spirit in your own personal studies as a result of this.

[1:20] So let's read together Romans chapter 8, verses 9 through 11. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.

[1:31] Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

[1:54] So there are three things that I want you to see, one from each verse. Paul is making some pretty strong claims here, and he uses this big if a couple of times.

[2:04] He's basically making logical assertions. He says, if this is true, then this also is true. And those three things, I'll go ahead and give them to you, and then I'm going to fill in the blanks. In verse 9, he says, if the Spirit of God is within us, then we belong to Christ.

[2:21] Verse 10, he says, if the Spirit is in you, then you have life because of righteousness. So there's a spiritual life that's in us if the Spirit of God is in us.

[2:34] And then finally, if the Spirit is in us, then we will be resurrected from the dead one day. We're going to spend most of our time on that second point, because Clay and John have done a great job of building us up into verse 9.

[2:50] Paul certainly is not presenting a new idea here when he says that we belong to Christ, if the Spirit of God is in us. Verse 7, he said, the mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God.

[3:01] But now he's made this case that our minds are not set on the flesh, they're set on the Spirit. We're no longer enemies of God, but we're actually his children.

[3:13] We belong to him because we're not in the flesh any longer. Second Corinthians 6.16 says, we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

[3:26] So did you catch that? God said, I will make my dwelling among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. So when the Spirit of God comes into us, we become his.

[3:36] He then owns us. Now the inverse, which is what Paul actually highlights in this verse, certainly true, if we don't have the Spirit of Christ, we don't belong to Christ. You see that?

[3:48] You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. In fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. So let that resound with you. If you fall into that category, then all of the good things I'm about to describe are not yours.

[4:02] Not yet. So the inverse is true. And then the final way to look at this verse, okay, if the Spirit dwells in us, then we belong to Christ. If we don't have the Spirit, we don't belong to Christ.

[4:13] And then finally, if we belong to Christ, we have the Spirit of Christ. It's inseparable from the idea. You couldn't be his and not have the Spirit any more than you could have the Spirit and not be his.

[4:25] And that's the foundation, kind of the springboard that we're moving into this next idea from, is that if we are Christ, if we call ourselves Christians, and we are, then we do have the Spirit of God dwelling within us.

[4:37] Okay? So the next verse, verse 10, if we read that together, it says, But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

[4:50] And that's an interesting word. Is life. It's not the Spirit brings life or gives you life, but is life. Okay? The Spirit is within us. So what I want us to see, and we're going to spend a great deal of energy sort of wrapping our minds around it, is that we have abundant spiritual life in Christ.

[5:10] In spite of death, which is brought on by sin, when the Spirit of God comes into us, he brings abundant spiritual life. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

[5:23] The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. A couple of verses later in 2 Corinthians 5.21, Paul says, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[5:38] So look what happens there. There's an exchange. Martin Luther is famous for saying, talking about this great exchange of our sin for Christ's righteousness in this exchange. What Paul is here highlighting in verse 10 is that while we retain physical death, we retain our sinful desires, we also receive spiritual life.

[6:00] When we receive new righteous desires, there's not only an exchange of our sin for his righteousness, but there's a turning over of desires, a displacement of desires.

[6:11] So we gain his desires and we do away with our desires. Now, the major difference is that when we receive his righteousness for our sin, that happens instantly.

[6:22] But the process of gaining his desires happens over the course of our life as we're sanctified. Our desires decrease and his increase within us.

[6:33] And the key is that whereas we once were dead and we could do no righteous act whatsoever by nature of being dead, we now are truly and fully alive and we can do what he wants.

[6:47] And in fact, we will find the longer we spend time with God and we live according to the spirit, we'll be able to do more and more works according to his desires.

[7:02] We will want more and more what he wants as we as we walk with him. So what I want to do then is to step back from this verse just a little bit and talk about the spirit, kind of lay a foundation because we throw this phrase around the Holy Spirit a lot.

[7:20] And I think that we all have a pretty decent theological understanding of it. But our practical understanding of the Holy Spirit is very weak. Mine is the same. I've grown up in the same types of churches that you have.

[7:33] Well-meaning churches that use the phrase Holy Spirit, but don't get down to the meat of what that means and how it actually impacts our living. So I want to ask the question first, what is spirit?

[7:45] And then more specifically, what is the Holy Spirit? So that we can get into a discussion of who the Holy Spirit is. So what is spirit?

[7:56] Just generally, it's a specific, identifiable substance, but it's non-material. I think we all are like, okay, Wes, I'm there with you. We can't define spirit in the sense that we can't box it into anything.

[8:11] It's non-material. It is, however, describable. It's just as real as matter. It just exists in another mode of being.

[8:23] Does that make sense? You can see me, touch me. You can't see and touch spirit because it's in a different mode of existence altogether.

[8:35] As such, it has the ability to penetrate. It can penetrate matter and spirit. Spirit can penetrate spirit. Spirit can penetrate personality.

[8:49] And so there are all types of spirits in the world, which we're sometimes aware of and sometimes not. And they have the ability to penetrate things like our thoughts. People who are lost, we've heard of spiritual demon possessions.

[9:04] Demons are spirits. And they have penetrated the minds and the bodies of people who are under their possession. So spirit can penetrate.

[9:16] And that's going to be really key as we move forward. And we talked about the Holy Spirit because we're going to be talking about things that we can't quite touch. But they're just as real.

[9:27] The spirit is just as real as matter. So what is the Holy Spirit? How is that qualified from just spirit in general? First, and it should be the most obvious, is that the Holy Spirit is God.

[9:40] And Psalm 139.7 ascribes omnipresence to the Holy Spirit. In Hebrews 9.14, it's said that the Holy Spirit is eternal.

[9:54] Just like any other spirit, the Holy Spirit is a being which dwells in another mode of existence. But he is a person, not a human person, but he has qualities and powers of personality.

[10:09] He's not matter, but he's substance, is the way to think of that. He has a will and intelligence. He has feeling and knowledge and sympathy.

[10:21] He can love and see and think. He can hear and speak. He can desire. Okay? So we have to start thinking about the Holy Spirit as a being with personality and not as some vague, ghostly figure like you would see in a movie.

[10:43] Everything that Jesus is, the Holy Spirit is. Everything that the Father is, the Holy Spirit is. They all are one in the Trinity. The churches always believe that.

[10:54] We just, I don't know, we just don't think about it, I guess. If we look at the ancient creeds, the Nicene Creed from 381 A.D. It says, We believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.

[11:11] And then the Athanasian Creed from the early 5th century says, But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one. The glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.

[11:22] Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. So when we talk about the characteristics of the Holy Spirit, the characteristics of Christ are the characteristics of the Holy Spirit.

[11:36] The personality of the Father is the personality of the Holy Spirit, because they're one. Okay? And that's, it's really foundational and maybe even a bit academic, but it's essential to our understanding of what the Spirit does.

[11:51] So, as we're thinking about what the Spirit does, we have to remember that He's a person who dwells within us, because He's in another mode of existence. Turn to Acts chapter 2.

[12:01] I want to shift to talking about what the Spirit has done, and then to talk about what the Spirit does.

[12:15] Okay? Because when the Spirit initially came and came into Christians, was at Pentecost, after Christ's resurrection and His ascension, the disciples are all basically just hanging out together.

[12:30] Jesus had told them, be still, don't do anything until you receive power from the Holy Spirit. Okay? So that's what they're doing, and the Bible tells us that they were all of one accord or of one mind. So there was unity among the disciples, and there was waiting and expectation for the Spirit, but other than that, they're just kind of hanging out and waiting.

[12:48] All right? And then the Spirit comes and a bunch of really crazy stuff happens, which we're going to discuss, but I want to read together Acts 2, starting in verse 1. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave the mutterings.

[13:21] Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, and at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

[13:35] And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus in Asia, Pergia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya beyond belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

[14:06] And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But others mocked, saying, They are filled with new wine. So, a few things that I want to see, three actually, that the Spirit brought at Pentecost.

[14:24] The first was a new kind of evidence. A new kind of evidence for the reality of their faith. See, Christ's evidences, these people already believed that Christ was the Messiah, but his evidences were all external.

[14:39] And he cites four different types of proof that he is who he says he is. Both the witness of John the Baptist and the testimony of the Father. Remember, when Jesus was baptized, a dove came down from heaven and there was a voice that said, This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.

[14:56] Jesus' works, he cites his miracles and his teaching and says, I am who I say I am. The Father has sent me. The works that I do are proof of that.

[15:08] And then finally, he references the Scriptures and says, Look, they say that I am who I say that I am. But these are all external proofs. They're external evidences. The Spirit comes in and we immediately have an inner evidence which supersedes logic even.

[15:26] We know that we've been made alive by the Spirit the same way that we know that we're physically alive right now. Nobody's sitting around thinking, Am I alive? Am I not alive? We just know it. We take a breath.

[15:37] That's external evidence. You don't have to take a breath to know that you're alive. I can hold my breath and still know that I'm alive because it's an internal proof. It supersedes me having to take in observe my surroundings and make an assessment of whether I'm alive or not.

[15:52] If I'm thinking, Rene Descartes said, I think, therefore I am. Okay? So, we know that we're physically alive and when the Spirit comes into us, we know that we're spiritually alive.

[16:05] We're instantly assured that our Savior is a real Savior when the Spirit enters us. Just as we're instantly aware that we're alive the moment we consider the question of our own existence. And the important thing here is that that changed everything.

[16:21] When, I feel like Steve Jobs on that. More than the iPhone, the Spirit changed everything. Christ completely changed the rules of religion altogether when the Spirit entered into the hearts of his saints.

[16:41] Okay? Religion used to be almost entirely external. There were internal facets to religion, but for the most part the way that we pleased God was by our actions. Now, religion, if you'll allow me the term, religion is as basic as life itself.

[16:59] Don't miss that. It is fundamental. It's a part of who we are. What had been about activity became about identity. God had said under the Old Covenant, live this way and you'll be my people, but he says to us in the New Covenant, you are mine, so you will live this way.

[17:17] Instead of a certain type of living getting us to God, God got to us and then he gets us to a certain type of living. And the Holy Spirit is his means to that end.

[17:29] So the Spirit inaugurated a new type of evidence for the reality of our faith. New evidence. The second thing is that he inaugurated a new kind of excitement.

[17:41] There's an emotion that's associated with what happens to the apostles. And you can see that people at the end of our text, people accuse these folks of being drunk.

[17:54] Paul later actually instructs Christians, don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, I don't know how many drunk people you've been around, but usually there's either some excitement or fighting and yelling.

[18:13] Our neighbors, our neighbor just got a new roommate and they party a lot now. So when they're not fighting and yelling, we can hear them making a big commotion, like last night about 1230, right outside of our bedroom.

[18:30] But when you're possessed by a substance such as alcohol, one of the effects can be excitement, albeit fading and not satisfying.

[18:44] It is exciting. And people were accusing these early Christians of being drunk because they didn't know how to explain what was going on. There was a new emotion.

[18:55] I mean, there wasn't fighting or yelling. We don't see that in the text. So probably they were having a pretty good time and that's why people ascribe drunkenness to them now they were speaking in new languages, which had to have been pretty, pretty crazy, pretty exciting.

[19:12] It says that people were all filled with wonder. And then after that, Peter stands up and gives the sermon and 3000 people are saved. Now, you could, you could cite Jonathan Edwards and say, look, Jonathan Edwards is the most boring preacher.

[19:26] And look, you had the great American awakening. It is my firm belief that God acted in spite of Jonathan Edwards' personality, personality, not, he didn't use Jonathan Edwards' personality to reach those people.

[19:39] He acted in spite of it. The spirit produces a kind of vibrant new emotion within us and it's contagious and it's exciting and we see that happening at the time of Pentecost.

[19:51] We have got to stop trying as Baptists to dampen that vibrance. At every turn we do it, both in our gatherings and in our own lives we want to lead these quiet and boring lives.

[20:07] And that's just not what the spirit does for us. It's exciting when the eternal and all-powerful God invades our hearts and starts doing things. God's not a boring God, is he?

[20:18] And he dwells within us. So there's a new evidence within us of the reality of our faith and there's a new excitement within us which was just not possible before the ever-present self-existent one entered into our hearts.

[20:36] And then finally there's a new energy, a new evidence, a new excitement, and a new energy. What happens is that these disciples gained a direct spiritual authority.

[20:50] Their fears, their questions, their doubts, these things go away because now they have an authority within them which is founded on life itself. I mentioned just a second ago that God is self-existent.

[21:04] Life emanates from him and now that life-emanating power resides within us. Acts 1.8 Jesus makes a promise before Pentecost. He says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

[21:19] So there's a new evidence, a new excitement, and a new energy which were completely foreign, at least in this degree.

[21:32] We're completely foreign to religion, to the people of God until this point. And then everything changes. Now if we believe in Christ, then we know that we have the Spirit of God within us.

[21:46] That's a whole other discussion. I think that we've covered we've covered that pretty well here before. That in order for you to believe in Christ and to be saved, the Spirit of God has to do something to you, has to make you alive and come into your heart.

[22:02] But if we believe in Christ, we already have all of the Spirit. And there's not anything more to be gained as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned. He doesn't parse out a little part of himself.

[22:12] He's a person. If I said, hey, I'm going to come give you a hand doing your lawn, I'm not going to cut my hand off and give it to you. I'm going to come help you do your lawn.

[22:24] And the Spirit is a person. He's not matter, but he's a whole, complete package. So if there's no more Spirit to be gained within us, then what's lacking is a realization of his fullness.

[22:39] Some pastors have cited Ephesians 5.18, which is where Paul says, don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. They use that phrase, be filled with the Spirit, to talk about this idea that they've called leaking the Spirit, which is a really ridiculous idea, but it's the idea that when we're saved, we're filled with the Spirit, but then as we live, we get less and less of the Spirit within us, so we have to do things to fill ourselves back up.

[23:05] Well, that's only true in our experience. The Spirit of God is not literally draining out of Christians. We have all of Him. We just neglect to realize that the Spirit is within us, and we neglect to live according to it.

[23:20] We miss a great many opportunities for joy and for fullness when we fail to see the Spirit's action in us and through us and around us and even for us.

[23:32] So how is it that we learn to see Him? It's by learning what He is like, learning what He desires, what He does.

[23:44] We're going to talk more about that in just a second, but just as a final, covering my logical basis here, the fullness of the Spirit in the disciples at Pentecost was not a one-time occurrence.

[24:00] It was the first-time occurrence. He filled up those Christians the same way that He fills us. We have the same Spirit who never changes. So people want to make the argument that what happened at Pentecost was a special event.

[24:15] And that doesn't happen in Christians anymore. But I would submit to you that if the same Spirit resides in us and never changes who resided in them, then those same types of things will still be happening because God cannot change.

[24:29] So it's not that He's failed us, it's that we have failed to recognize His presence. Listen to what A.W. Tozer said about that point. And by the way, A.W.

[24:39] Tozer's Life by the Spirit is an incredible book. I would really commend it to you if you want to learn more about this as well as Henry Blackaby's Experiencing God. Great resources.

[24:50] But listen to what Tozer says. Our Father who is in heaven raised certain high expectations of what He was going to do for His redeemed people. He's referring to prophecies. When His Son came to redeem those people, He heightened those expectations, raised them, clarified them, extended them, enlarged them, and emphasized them.

[25:09] He raised an expectation that was simply beyond words, too wonderful and beautiful and thrilling to imagine. I want to ask you, is this level of Christianity which we fundamentalists in this city now enjoy, what He meant by what He said?

[25:23] So did you catch that? He said, God, for all of redemptive history, has been raising expectations of what it would be like when the Spirit came. And then Jesus comes onto the scene and He raises those expectations even more.

[25:34] And then Tozer says, so is the Christianity that you're living out today, does it meet those expectations? He says, no, there certainly has been a vast breakdown somewhere between promise and fulfillment.

[25:46] That breakdown is not with our Heavenly Father. So if we're asking ourselves then, okay, Wes, I'll concede that there is a deeper level of spiritual living that we're just not reaching to.

[26:03] The question should be, how do I get there? How can I be filled with the Spirit? And I want to give you some advice, but please hear me say this is not a how-to guide.

[26:14] If you do everything that I'm about to say, you will have just taken half of your first step towards living a Spirit-filled abundant life. It is going to be for us just as C.S.

[26:28] Lewis wrote in the last battle, we will be continually drawn higher up and further in, higher up and further in. There's an infinite God who wants to know us for eternity, and we're going to continually get to know Him better and get to live better according to His promises and the fullness that's in Him.

[26:53] So, with that said then, go ahead and turn to Romans 12. We're not going to get there just yet, but you can have your finger there.

[27:05] A few things that we have to accept before we can begin to do anything. Okay, so we've got to make some mental ascent to some truths before we can do anything in order to be filled with the Spirit.

[27:19] The first, we have to accept or believe that there is fullness in the Spirit, and we all seem to kind of believe this, but so few of us experience it that I throw it in here because I'm inclined to wonder whether we really do believe it or not.

[27:34] But we have to believe that there is a fullness of the Spirit, that there's a level of living according to the power of the Spirit that we haven't yet reached.

[27:46] And then we have to accept, and this is the one that hurts, but we have to accept that Spirit-filled living as a Christian is normal Christian living. It's not the deluxe edition of Christianity, but living by the power of the Spirit is Christianity 1.0.

[28:05] They're not going to roll out any updates to that app. It's done. It's the original, it's the one and the only, if we want to follow that analogy.

[28:16] We have been neglecting some special features, but they were already there. In John 15.5, Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

[28:28] So if we want to bear much fruit, it's by abiding in Christ, it's by dwelling with, remaining with the Spirit. and then he's going to produce that fruit through us, just like fruit grows on the branches, but the energy for that fruit is supplied by the vine.

[28:51] Before you can be filled with the Spirit, you have to desire it. So that's a tough one. If you've thought about desires and actions, any, you're going to go, well, how can I make myself desire anything?

[29:02] I would just beg you to not follow me down that path. If you are asking yourself that question, it's proof that you already desire it at least a little bit, so act on that desire.

[29:14] But you do have to desire to be filled with the Spirit, and you have to let yourself want that, and then acknowledge that if the Spirit possesses you, he's going to have all of you.

[29:25] He will be Lord. He's the Lord of the universe. We cannot expect him to come into our hearts and not be Lord of us as well. It's not his nature to share authority or glory furthermore, he's not going to tolerate our sin, especially those, what toes are called self-sins, self-love or self-pity.

[29:49] God is not concerned with us in that regard. He's concerned with him. We should love him. We should pity those without him. So if we're going to have the Spirit fill us, we're going to have to get very serious about our sin.

[30:04] extremely serious. How on earth could a holy God indwell with people who want both holiness and sin?

[30:15] They're opposite. You can't be hot and cold. A cannot be non-A. So if we want the Spirit to fill us up, then we're going to have to get really serious about our sin.

[30:29] and if we're finding ourselves continually in the same sins, then it's proof that we're not serious about our sins. Proof that we're not taking as drastic a measure as we can to root it out.

[30:44] And then finally, we have to accept and acknowledge that if the Spirit indwells us, he's also going to bring us into opposition with the world. The world hates the Spirit just as much as they ever hated Jesus.

[30:56] They're one and the same. I will submit to you, though, that the rewards of being filled with the Spirit far outweigh the costs. So if we can accept all those things together, then what are we going to do?

[31:11] And the first is found in Romans 12, verses 1 and 2. Paul writes, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

[31:27] Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Right?

[31:40] So, we're to present our bodies as the first step to being filled with the Spirit. And what does that mean? Because I don't believe that Paul is here saying wherever your body goes, let that be where God wants you to go, because God considers ourselves to be much more than just our flesh and our blood, but things are a part of us, such as our thoughts, our mind, our personality.

[32:08] Man, that's a huge one, personality. We've got to stop hiding behind this idea that our personality can't be changed, that the Spirit of God can't invade our personality.

[32:20] It does and probably is the central facet of who we are. But listen, apart from the Spirit of God, who we are is sinful. We're his enemies apart from him.

[32:32] So we want him to change who we are. We want to give up our personality for the sake of his personality being infused into ours. We can't keep using this excuse of, well, yeah, I like to love people from a distance because it's not my personality to be a people person.

[32:50] Well, it's baloney. Because if the Holy Spirit is within us, that's the Spirit of Christ. And he got to know people. And there's so much more we could say about that point.

[33:01] But if you ever find yourselves hiding behind the lie that your personality somehow hinders you from being obedient to God, strike it as sin.

[33:17] Other things that are a part of our bodies are ambitions. our desires. Everything that makes us who we are will have to be literally sacrificed, killed, in order that we might make more of him and be made more like him.

[33:43] So the first thing is to present our bodies to him. The second, and I'd like you to turn here, is Luke 11, 9-13. we have to present our bodies to the spirit.

[34:03] We also have to ask him. Jesus says, I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives.

[34:15] And the one who seeks finds. And to the one who knocks it will be open. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? If he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?

[34:28] If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So, it just seems that God operates this way, that he invades our hearts with the Holy Spirit and we believe in him and we're saved.

[34:51] But if we want to be filled with the Spirit and we want to live according to the infinite power of the Holy Spirit within us, we have to ask him for it. And we can come up with all kinds of theological objections to that point, but it's right there in the word.

[35:04] If we ask, we receive it. He even goes so far as to say, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? There's no way to wiggle around that. So, you guys know what I believe soteriologically and I'm not a very good Calvinist when I say this, but if you want the Holy Spirit to fill you up, you have to ask him to do it.

[35:24] I'd rather be a good Christian than a good Calvinist any day. If we want the Spirit of God to fill us, not just be in us, but to fill us up, then we have to ask for it. And then we can thank God afterward for putting the desire in us to ask if that helps us sleep better.

[35:41] So, we have to ask. Next, in Acts 5.32, we read, and we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.

[35:57] So, God has given the Holy Spirit to those who obey him. the next point is, if we want the Holy Spirit to fill us, we have to be obedient to him. We have to obey God.

[36:08] That's a simple but revolutionary idea, that we would do what God says. We ask God to be filled with the Spirit, and then we get up, and we follow him.

[36:21] We say, God, give me the ability to be obedient to you, and then we get up, and we obey him. The Spirit will find the Spirit enables us to be obedient, to be successful in following God, in new and deeper ways, but we ask, and we obey.

[36:42] And there's an idea that's connected with obedience, which is found in Galatians 3.2. I'd love for you to turn there. And that's to have faith. Faith and obedience always work hand in hand.

[36:55] Paul strongly here, writing to the Galatians, he says, O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

[37:07] Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? So you see here, he's establishing where they were saved, and they received the Spirit by faith.

[37:20] And then in verse 3, he says, Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?

[37:38] We receive salvation and fullness of the Spirit by the same means, and that's by faith. Paul highlights that in verses 2 and in 3. In verse 3, he says, having begun by the Spirit, salvation, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

[37:54] Sanctification, the work of the Spirit, as we live out life. So we are saved and sanctified by faith. Fullness, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, living in us and filling our living, is, in this case, an advance on our initial rebirth, because, for whatever reason, we're able to savingly believe and then sit on our hands, but living according to the Spirit Spirit, is getting up and doing something with that.

[38:27] I'm so glad that Jerry Rainer is here this morning. He has a great analogy for this. He says, if a young couple were to get married, and we as a church decided to give them a gift and fill their cupboards!

[38:38] with food, so they get married and we say, hey, when you get home, your cabinets are full of food, it's yours, it's a gift, and they went home and they never opened the cabinets,! So, according to the analogy, then the Spirit is within us.

[38:58] It's there, we're full of it, but we're not doing anything with it unless we're living according to it. We have to open up the cabinets and partake of the food.

[39:13] So, if we have begun on this path of living according to the Spirit, we have faith and obedience working together and the Spirit is empowering us to be obedient, then how is it that we're going to cultivate this relationship?

[39:32] How are we going to get to know Him? We talk a lot about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and that's all fine and good because the Spirit and Christ are one in the Trinity, but really we ought to talk about a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit because He's the one that's with us.

[39:47] Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, interceding on our behalf. So, how is it that we're going to cultivate this relationship with the Holy Spirit? Remember we said He's a living person?

[39:59] So, we want to get to know Him. I really like coffee, okay? But I didn't always like coffee. In fact, I liked a girl who liked coffee before I liked coffee.

[40:10] coffee. And now she's my wife. the more that I experienced of coffee though, the more I began to appreciate the subtleties.

[40:22] So, now I can drink coffee black and enjoy it. Now, at first, what I drank was very little coffee and very much sugar. But now, I can drink a black cup of coffee and go, oh yeah, I can tell that that was dried by people in Africa throwing it out in the dirt rather than running it through a machine.

[40:41] Because I've tasted different types of coffee that have been treated that way and I have learned to realize what those subtleties are. The same thing is true of a friend.

[40:52] You want to get to know a friend, you find out what they like and what they don't like and what types of things they do and what types of things they never do. You hang out with them. So, how do we get to know then the Holy Spirit, the living person of the Holy Spirit?

[41:08] The first is that we seek to get to know him in the word. Psalm 1 says, Blessed is the man who does not walk in the way of the wicked or sit in the way of sinners or stand in the way of scoffers, but his delight is on the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates both day and night.

[41:26] He's like a tree planted by streams of water and everything he does prospers. So, we seek to immerse ourselves, to meditate on the word. Joshua 1.8 says, Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth, but meditate on it both day and night, so that you may be careful to do all that's written within it.

[41:44] So, if we want to let the word affect us, we have to meditate on it. We have to roll it around in our minds and let it affect our living. We have to seek to know who God is in the book that he's given us that tells us all about him.

[42:00] Second, we have to spend time paying attention to him. What is he doing? Where is he going? Amos 3, 3 says, Can two walk together except they be agreed? And that seems like a silly proverb almost.

[42:13] Of course, I can't walk with you unless I agree to walk beside you. If I decide not to walk with you, I'll turn and go another direction and we're no longer walking together. But when we begin to apply that to the spirit, we see how fundamental it is that we walk where he's walking.

[42:30] We go towards the same goal. So we need to spend time paying attention to where he's walking in order that we can stay with him. The next thing is that we need to be engrossed with glorifying Jesus Christ.

[42:49] We need to let Christ take all of our attention. Let that activity of bringing him glory consume us. Because the chief end of God is to glorify himself.

[43:02] God is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. So we have to make that our singular goal. John 7 39 says, Now this he said about the spirit, Jesus said this about the spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as the spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

[43:24] So when Jesus is glorified, the spirit comes. This is a concept that is constant. It doesn't happen this one time. When we glorify God, that's what the spirit wants to do as well.

[43:35] So we find that we're walking with him. We have to devote ourselves to the glory of Jesus, and then the Holy Spirit will become the aggressor in the relationship.

[43:46] We want to talk about getting to know him. Well, if we're glorifying God, he'll get to know us. He'll raise us and illuminate us and fill us and bless us, because that's what he wants to happen.

[43:57] when we walk with the spirit when we're doing the same things that he's doing, which brings me to my next point, which is to walk in righteousness.

[44:11] Get to know the person of the spirit, be engrossed with glorifying Christ, and walk in righteousness. We cannot be spiritual and not do good. The Holy Spirit implies holy living coming out of us.

[44:26] Do you see that? The Holy Spirit is in me, and holy living is coming out of me. It doesn't work any other way. If you want to cultivate a relationship with the spirit of God, then be holy as he is holy.

[44:40] Make your thoughts a clean living space. I'm going to talk about walking in righteousness. Well, we've already mentioned that the body is the temple of God.

[44:53] Our thoughts, then, are his living room. what we think pretty much determines the temperature, the climate of our heart.

[45:06] Furthermore, God considers our thoughts as a part of us, just as much a part of us as our personality or our hands and our feet. If our bodies are his tabernacle and our thoughts are certainly included in that deal, then we need to have clean thoughts.

[45:24] And it doesn't matter what type of unclean thoughts we're having. I guarantee you they are hindering us from knowing the spirit in a more intimate and deeper way.

[45:36] Because he's not going to exist in a space that's filled with his opposite. it. So, finally, how to cultivate the spirit's companionship.

[45:51] We should cultivate the art of recognizing the presence of the spirit everywhere. He is not confined to things that happen in this room. He's not confined to things that happen just when you're on mission trips or at campus outreach.

[46:09] He's everywhere. He's working. We just have to learn to recognize when he's working. Martin Luther said a dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God. Tozer gives an encouragement on this point.

[46:23] He says if you will thus see it and thus believe it and thus surrender to it, there won't be a secular stone in the pavement. There won't be a common profane deed that you will ever do. The most menial task can become a priestly!

[46:36] When the Holy Ghost takes over and Christ becomes your all in all. So in closing, I want to look back at our text.

[46:49] Romans chapter 8 verse 11. Paul writes that the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.

[47:03] He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. So my final point, if you've lost track, our three points this morning are that we belong to Christ, we have fulfilled spiritual life, and finally we will one day be resurrected with Christ.

[47:28] Ephesians 2, 4-7 says, But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

[47:39] By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

[47:52] So I ask the question, so what? I mean, we're going to be resurrected, you know, hooray. Why does that matter to us now? What it means is that on the last day it doesn't matter what state or condition our bodies are in, whether we're physically living or physically dead or whether we couldn't find a bit of our flesh, he's going to raise us, he's going to give us a perfect spiritual body which will live eternally with him in a new heaven and a new earth.

[48:25] The knowledge of the resurrection gives us strength to live and to love, even when we don't experience immediate earthly rewards. The spirit gives us a faith that supersedes reason and also a hope that surpasses time because it's an eternal hope, it's a hope of glory, eternal reward and that motivates us to love.

[48:51] So we're God's people. We have spiritual life for now that brings joy and excitement and it convinces us from within of the truth of our faith.

[49:03] It empowers us to do amazing things and it gives us a hope for eternity. Pray with me.

[49:16] Thank you.