Romans 220: Romans 8 - The Holy Spirit Leads Us Through ExperiencesWelcome To BARAH MINISTRIES a Christian Church Rory Clark Pastor-Teacher
Good Morning!
Welcome to Barah Ministries…a worldwide Christian Church based in Mesa, AZ…my name is Pastor Rory Clark.
In God’s plan, there is always a tearing down of the old before there is a building up of the new. So it is with our spiritual life experience. There is always a death before “The Resurrection Life.” God the Holy Sprit is clearly at the helm of our spiritual life’s ship. He is steering us away from the selfish life from whence we came, to the selfless life in service to Christ. The series of deaths teach us what we don’t want…the resurrection life gives us victory from deaths. In Luke, Chapter 5, Verses 37 to 39 we learn…
LUK 5:37 “…no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the old wineskins and the wine will be spilled out, and the old wineskins will be ruined.”
LUK 5:38 “But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.”
LUK 5:39 “And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new wine; for he says, ‘The old wine is good enough.’”
We do not wish for the new self things…they are too calm and too comforting to us. We gravitate to the past…to the old self things…we don’t easily let go of old ideas and old fixations. Yet Hosea, Chapter 6, Verse 1 exhorts us…
HOS 6:1 “Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.” The Lord allows our experiences. We wander away from the faith, we wander away from the Lord, we wander away from the Word of God to the old things, and we put ourselves in a position to be torn to pieces by the savage dogs in the kingdom of death. The Lord allows us to wander, but He will not allow us to be “hurled headlong.” Wandering happens to all of us at one time or another. The Lord gave us God the Holy Spirit to lead us into all the truth.
As we grow spiritually, the wise among us realize through experience that wandering off alone into the camp of the enemy is pretty foolish. Yet who among us has not thought he was self-sufficient? Who among us has not thought he had a power, on his own, to tackle the temptations of the kingdom of death, only to get deeply and painfully in touch with our utter powerless? All of us have experimented with the lifestyles of religion, both lasciviousness and legalism, only to find them empty.
A noted author writes…
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION “It is more than comforting to realize that it is those who have wallowed in the depths of failure to whom God invariably gives the call to shepherd others. The call to shepherd others is not a call given to the gifted, the highly trained, or the polished. Without the bitter experiences of their own inadequacy and their own poverty, shepherds of others are quite unfit to bear the burden of spiritual ministry.”
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION “It takes a person who has discovered the depths of his own weakness to be patient with the weaknesses of others. Such a person has a first-hand knowledge of the loving care of the Chief Shepherd, and the experience of the Lord Jesus Christ’s ability to heal the one who has come humbly to trust in the Lord and the Lord alone for all things.”
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION “Therefore the shepherd looks beyond the sinfulness, the willfulness, the youth, and the stupidity of others, to the might of unchanging, unconditional love and forgiveness.”
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION The Lord Jesus Christ did not say, ‘Be a shepherd to My lambs’ and ‘Be a shepherd to My sheep’ at the point of the apostle Peter’s self-confident affirmation of his undying loyalty to Christ. No. The Lord gives the order to shepherd others after Peter has utterly failed to keep his vows and has wept bitterly in the streets of Jerusalem at his total inadequacy.”
In Second Corinthians, Chapter 5, Verses 14 to 21, we learn this…
2CO 5:14 For the (unconditional) love of Christ controls us (believers in Christ), having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died…
2CO 5:15 …and the Lord died for all, so that they who live (believers in Christ) might no longer live for themselves, but (that they might live) for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.
2CO 5:16 Therefore from now on we (believers in Christ) recognize no one according to the flesh (the external things); even though we have known Christ according to the flesh (on the surface when we were unbelievers), yet now we know Him in this way no longer.
2CO 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in (union with) Christ (and all believers are), he is a new creature; the old (self) things passed away; behold, new (self) things have come.
2CO 5:18 Now all these (new self) things are from God (the Father), who reconciled us (believers in Christ) to Himself through (our union with) Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…
2CO 5:19 …namely, that God (the Father) was (through) Christ reconciling (all creatures) to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and (God the Father) has committed to us (believers in Christ) the word of reconciliation. 2CO 5:20 Therefore, we (believers in Christ) are ambassadors for Christ, as though God (the Father) were making an appeal through us (because He is); we (believers in Christ) beg you (unbelievers) on behalf of Christ, (please) be reconciled to God.
2CO 5:21 (God the Father) made (the Lord Jesus Christ) who knew no sin to be (a) sin (substitute) on our behalf (instead of us), so that we might become the (absolute) righteousness of God in (union with) Him.
We press on in our spiritual journey with joy in our hearts and a song on our lips while following the guidance of God the Holy Spirit, who is leading us into all the truth and into all the new self things. In selflessness, we enjoy the experiences of death, knowing that our God works them together for good, so that we may no longer live for ourselves, but for others.
MUSIC AND REFLECTION Be Occupied with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ Enjoy the Singing of His Praises
I WILL June Murphy
The opening song is…I WILL by June Murphy.
OPENING PRAYER
Let us pray...
We’re grateful, Heavenly Father, for the privilege of studying Your absolute truth...the Word of God…
Thank you for allowing us to learn…thank you for that part of our unregenerate self that You have left in place to instruct us…“the flesh” … and thanks for having the patience with us as we learn the total worthlessness of its offer in a meaningful life…
Help us to KNOW Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, but more than this, help us to realize, on a daily basis, that KNOWING Him is not enough…help us to use our experiences, which You allow, to LIVE Jesus by benefiting from the experiences we gain in death, passing them on to others as life giving spirituality…
We ask this through the power of God the Holy Spirit in Christ’s name...Amen.
TODAY’S STUDY The Holy Spirit Leads Us Through Experiences
As parents, we always seem to want our children to learn about life through books and through our own lectures. We “hold court” with our kids when we lecture…“by God when I was your age I walked up hill to school over five miles, barefooted, through the snow.” When our kids stop to think about our lectures, they realize that Kansas is as flat as a pancake…there are no hills in Kansas…and that Arizona doesn’t have snow. In other words, our kids know that a lot of our stories are made up. The truth we often don’t want to acknowledge as parents is that sometimes our kids learn from books and lectures, but MOST of the time, they ONLY learn from experiences, and not really from positive experiences. The Parent who knows that truth better than any parent is the One who leads us believers in Christ into all the truth…God the Holy Spirit. In today’s lesson we realize that God the Holy Spirit guides us progressively through a set of experiences which help us to put the old life we had “in Adam” behind, and to embrace the new life we have “in Christ,” by using the power of the Spirit indwelling us. First, a few announcements.
BARAH MINISTRIES ANNOUNCEMENTS
CONGRATULATIONS AND PRAYERS! Justin and Laura Coker Non-Resident Congregation Members Moved to Artesia, NM
Praying for a job for Laura…and for quick acclimation to their new environment.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Barah Ministries PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW YORK BIBLE CONFERENCE Binghamton, NY September 18-19, 2015
Looking forward to that…
MARK YOUR CALENDARS! EVENING SERVICE September 20, 2015 6:00P-7:30P MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Next Deacon’s Meeting September 26, 2015 7:30AM MST
TODAY’S STUDY The Holy Spirit Leads Us Through Experiences
We continue our study of Romans, Chapter 8, our introduction to the holy life we are to live as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and our introduction to the One who guides us and provides the power for that life…God the Holy Spirit. Let’s start at Romans, Chapter 7, Verse 22 with the lead in verses to Romans, Chapter 8…
ROM 7:22 For I (Paul) joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man…
Paul is saying that he sees his new self willingly in line with God’s desires for him…
ROM 7:23 …but I see a different law in the members of my body (“the flesh”), waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.
Yet Paul is very aware of the warfare going on inside…a battle for control of the soul…a battle of course, which “the flesh” will lose because of our indwelling Spirit who is waging war with “the flesh” on our behalf.
For a believer in Christ, “the flesh” has been neutralized JUDICIALLY by God…it is condemned…it is dead…God no longer sees “the flesh” as a problem in our relationship with Him.
Experientially, “the flesh” is not removed and it is still very operative, dispensing its lessons of death to us believers in Christ. Romans, Chapter 7, Verse 24…
ROM 7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
Paul recognizes that his deliverance will come from a Person.
ROM 7:25 Thanks be to God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord (for the deliverance)! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh (I am serving) the law of sin.
Paul acknowledges that there are two things going on inside of himself…the desire to serve God in the new self…and the desire to sin in “the flesh.” Arrrrgh! And as the lessons encouraged last week, let us know that there is to be no mixture of the two poles that exist within us. In our experience, life FEELS like we are spiritually bi-polar…we are not…judicially, God has handled the problem of our old self. God the Holy Spirit, will handle the experiential challenge. Let’s take a quick music break and we’ll learn how the Spirit teaches us through experiences.
MUSIC BREAK BLESSINGS Laura Story
TODAY’S STUDY The Holy Spirit Leads Us Through Experiences
Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 1 reminds us…
ROM 8:1 Therefore (all these things at the end of Romans 7 being the case, we need to remember that…) there is now NO CONDEMNATION for those who are IN UNION WITH CHRIST JESUS.
When we look at our daily lives, and our daily experiences, we have to ask ourselves, “How is it that there is no condemnation for me, the one who is in union with Christ? That’s not my experience at all! My experience is constant condemnation of self and others.” What we have to realize, as believers in Christ, is that JUDICIALLY there is no condemnation…GOD no longer sees us as condemned. The RIGHTEOUS JUDGE has dealt with the problem of Adam’s sin and has dealt with the law in His own eyes, with His own propitiatory solution…the only PERFECT Solution…with the perfectly satisfactory work of the Lord Jesus Christ at the Cross on our behalf. Yet experientially, as believers in Christ, we have a completely different reality. We are constantly learning the lessons of death because our unredeemed bodies still house “the flesh” and “the flesh” still functions…it lusts…it sends temptations to the soul…it rebels against everything that is of God…it has enmity toward God (an intense hostility and hatred)…it is against God and His Word…it is not in subjection to anything God requests…it is not a follower of the law…it is not a doer of God’s will. What do you notice as you watch “the flesh” in operation within you? If you’re like me you’ll see conditional love…unforgiveness…and the constant harangue of wonder about why people operate the way they do. Yet why do we ask why people operate the way they do? People operate the way they do because they have “the flesh” as well. That why Second Corinthians, Chapter 5, Verse 16 reminded us earlier…
2CO 5:16 Therefore from now on we (believers in Christ) recognize no one according to the flesh (the external things); even though we have known Christ according to the flesh (on the surface when we were unbelievers), yet now we know Him in this way no longer.
Here’s what I see in operation…we don’t separate the doer from the deed…we don’t see our new selves and “the flesh” within us as different…we don’t live the separation that Paul is talking about in Romans, Chapter 7, Verse 25…
ROM 7:25 Thanks be to God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
Not only that, we don’t acknowledge that “the flesh” exists within others…and when we don’t see that separation between “the mind” and “the flesh”…between the rational and the emotional…we expect ourselves and others to be the new, rational self all the time…we expect that there is going to come a day when we don’t sin and when others don’t sin…a day when none of us will “disappoint” God (and of course you can’t disappoint a God who loves you unconditionally). Why is this our experience? Because we can’t accept the fact that JUDICIALLY the Lord Jesus Christ has already handled all of our maladies from the old self through His blood sacrifice at the Cross…and we can’t accept the fact that God the Holy Spirit is now systematically and progressively leading us into the new self life.
So since we won’t just exercise the same faith we exercised at salvation in our sanctified spiritual lives, God the Holy Spirit leads us through a series of experiences, which are much better teachers than books and lectures.
What are these experiences of death like in your life?
For me there are the repetitive sins that are so easy to ignore. You have them, too. It’s the things we keep doing over and over again, realizing that we hate doing these things, while continuing to do them anyway…realizing that these are the old things that have passed away, yet continuing to breathe life into them by paying attention to them.
I think we need a bit of perspective about the whole thing.
Lately, when I want to harangue about the missteps of others, I have been turning the attention to myself…applying the lessons I learn from watching others to myself. I see others doing things that they know are not the new self, and rather than critiquing them, I turn the inspection to myself. I ask myself, “What am I doing that is similar? What is the lesson that this experience provides? What am I missing?” BUT there is a BIG difference in the next step. Rather than going into myself, in endless introspection for the answers, I am going to God the Holy Spirit for the answers. I am asking HIM, “What am I missing? What is the lesson that is available to learn from the things I am learning while watching others and what are the lesson that are available to learn from the things I am doing myself? And He answers. He leads me to the answers in the Word of God.
God the Holy Spirit leads us through experiences.
The lesson of these experiences is to watch God the Holy Spirit’s work in your life, and to not give yourself pseudo-tranquility by thinking about how much better you are than others. Luke, Chapter 18, Verses 9 to 14…
LUK 18:9 And Jesus also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt…
LUK 18: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”
LUK 18:11 “The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’”
LUK 18:12 “ ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’”
LUK 18:13 “But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ ”
LUK 18:14 “I tell you, this man went to his house justified (he became a believer in Christ) rather than the other (and NOT the other); for everyone who exalts himself (like the Pharisee) will be humbled, but he who humbles himself (like the Tax Collector) will be exalted.”
We would all agree that it would be wise to stop viewing others with contempt. It would be wiser to stop viewing ourselves with contempt. I enjoy the moments when it is obvious to me that I am not “all that,” but now for a whole new reason. Before it was just the lesson of my own total depravity. God says we’re totally depraved, my experiences of depravity in myself confirmed it, and I said, “God, you’re right.” Well He always knew He was right. Now my experience of my own depravity is giving me a very real compassion for others that I never really had. <My divorce> Through my experiences of self, God the Holy Spirit is teaching me to care genuinely for others…not for the “good feelings” that accrue to myself, the feelings for example, that I make a difference…but for genuinely putting my own life in perspective. If I am totally depraved, and God the Holy Spirit is still patiently leading me, how much more must I be patient for others who are slow to learn the lessons of experiences.
I thank God for not teaching me through books and lectures…rather teaching me through experience…and I thank God for letting me let others have the same privilege of learning through experiences, while standing by to be any help I can to them growing and learning what it really means to be human… and what it really means to be in submission to the Spirit and to led by Him with Him in the front seat and with me in the back seat.
I truly know what John the Baptist meant when he said, in John, Chapter 3, Verse 30…
JOH 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease.
God the Holy Spirit is teaching me through experiences to submit to Him and to depend on His power, and to not depend at all on the meager power of self. Romans., Chapter 8, Verse 2…
ROM 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
God the Holy Spirit is telling us, “You’re out of the prison of slavery to sin and the law…follow Me…depend on Me…listen to Me…learn from Me…don’t depend on yourself…I’ll take care of everything. And you know…I’m starting to think He knows what he’s talking about. When the Lord Jesus Christ Promises Salvation, It’s a Guarantee!
ROM 3:10 …as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one”
ROM 5:8 But God the Father demonstrates His own unconditional love toward all mankind, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
JOH 3:17 For God the Father did not send the Son (the Lord Jesus Christ) into the world to condemn the world, but the Father sent His Son into the world that the world might be saved through believing in Him.
JOH 1:12 But as many as received the Lord (taking advantage of the free gift of salvation), to them He gave the right (once and for all time) to become children of God…to those who believe in Christ’s name…
CLOSING SONG VOICE OF TRUTH Casting Crowns
CLOSING PRAYER Let us pray...
THANKS- INTERCESSION- PETITION
And we pray that You continue to shape messages from this pulpit that accurately reflect Your unconditional love, Your glorious Person, Your lucid thinking, Your impeccable work, and Your magnificent essence...we ask this through the power of God the Holy Spirit, in Christ’s name, Amen.
Thanks for coming! Thanks for watching! Thanks for listening!
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