Now we come to message number 13. I never intended that, but message number
13 in Romans 8 series on the Holy Spirit. And we certainly welcome you who are guests
to our church to the end of our series. Regrettably, some of you haven’t been with
us in the previous messages, so you’re a little behind the curve. But that’s okay. Turn to Romans 8, and while you’re doing
that I do want to make a comment about the worship book. There’s a note about it in the Grace Today. There have been some rather careful edits
in that book that has come out in past years and some added material to it, to enrich it
and update it. And perhaps the most notable thing is the
final chapter in the book is on music, what is appropriate music for worship? And there are things in that chapter that
are unique to the book and I just wanted to let you know that that and another brand-new
chapter sort of set it apart from the past editions of it. And speaking of worship, the series that we’re
doing has one goal in mind and that is to help us worship the Holy Spirit as we should. When I gave the first message and I called
for worship of the Holy Spirit, after the service was over I didn’t get very far until
I was stopped in my tracks by someone who was outraged---outraged that I would even
suggest that we ought to worship, offer praise, prayer to the Holy Spirit which points out
the problem. We need to worship the Holy Spirit in the
same way that we worship the Son of God and God the Father Himself. In Revelation 22:9 there’s a very brief
command and it says, “Worship God…Worship God.” The last chapter of the Bible, worship God. That isn’t anything new. If you go to the beginning of the Bible, the
Pentateuch, the writings of Moses, you will find there are many calls to worship God. If you get into the books of history, the
books of poetry, the prophets, all the sacred writings that make up the Old Testament everywhere
you go; you will be repeatedly commanded in one way or another to worship God. In fact, Jesus tells us in John 4 that the
Father seeks true worshipers. We are described by Paul in Philippians 3
as those who worship God in the Spirit, the Spirit of God. We are worshipers of God, that’s what we
do, that’s why we’re here. God is the audience and we are offering Him
worship as we should every day individually in our lives and do collectively when we gather
like this. When the Bible instructs us to worship God,
the God we are to worship is the triune God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the true
and living God, the only God, three in one. When we are commanded as we are so frequently
to worship God that must mean all three members of the Trinity. In no sense are we to offer any member of
the Trinity any less worship than we offer any other member of the Trinity. We are not to assume that when Scripture says
to worship God that somehow we are to worship certain persons of the Trinity and no others,
or certain persons more than others. Should we not assume that every command in
Scripture to worship God is a command to worship the Holy Spirit who is fully God? When we get a glimpse of heaven in the fourth
chapter of Revelation, and we read in verses 10 and 11 that the twenty-four elders along
with the living creatures fall down before Him who sits on the throne and will worship
Him who lives forever and ever, are we to assume that that is one member of the Trinity,
or two, but not the third? When the worship is given to us, the very
words of heavenly worship, “Worthy are You, our Lord, and our God to receive glory and
honor and power for You created all things and because of Your will they exist and were
created,” that that is excluding the Holy Spirit? I think not. We are to worship the God who is God and God
declares Himself to be I Am who I Am and who He is, is three in one. And yet when we talk about worshiping the
Holy Spirit, it sounds new and it sounds novel and for some people it even sounds wrong. And the argument tends to be, “Well no,
no, the Spirit points to Christ.” Well of course the Spirit points to Christ,
but in pointing to Christ He does not diminish His own deity. He does not depreciate His own identity. He does not intend to diminish worship given
to Him. He points us to Christ but He is no less God
and God is to be worshiped. The Holy Spirit is fully God, gloriously God,
holy God, eternal God, worthy of worship. The Holy Spirit is equally the possessor of
all divine attributes that belong to the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit equally participates in every
divine activity for the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit participates in everything
from creation to consummation. All true worship then embraces the Holy Spirit,
includes the Holy Spirit. He cannot be separated from the Trinity whom
we worship and whom we praise. Why has this not been clear to us? Because for many people, that point that I
made about the Holy Spirit pointing to Christ which Jesus disclosed in His last night with
the disciples in the Upper Room, seems to some people and it’s caught traction and
become part of Christian thinking that the Holy Spirit is there for deflecting worship
toward Christ. Not so. He shows us Christ for a very clear purpose
which we studied some weeks ago, that we might see the model of perfected humanity and as
we gaze at the glory of the perfected human, He changes us into His image. To show us Christ is not to defer worship. It is another way in which we should worship
Him and honor Him. But beyond that sort of strange quirk in traditional
understanding, even worse, the Holy Spirit is not considered today in the same way that
the Son and the Father are considered because there has been for many, many years now, coming
from the third force, the third column in the Christian world; first column, Protestantism;
second, Roman Catholicism; the third, Pentecostal Charismaticism; there has been coming from
that third wave, terrible, tragic confusion about the Holy Spirit, misrepresentation of
the Holy Spirit, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, insults directed at the Holy Spirit, and they
are relentless and they are severe and they are serious. The evangelical church’s understanding of
the Holy Spirit has been mangled. Biblical truth has been depreciated and in
its place have come bizarre things attributed to the Holy Spirit by people who have, in
many cases, absolutely no relationship to the Holy Spirit whatsoever. Endless assaults are waged on His person and
His work coming out of that third column. This Movement has kidnapped the Holy Spirit
and held Him hostage and all criticisms of their aberrations and blasphemies are denounced
by them as being divisive, unloving, and intolerant. Obviously thinking through all of this over
the last three months and preaching all of this has stirred my own heart and hearts of
people around me who are saying, “We need to do a book on this; we need to bring this
to light. It’s been a long time since Charismatic
Chaos came out. This needs to be addressed and so we’ve
decided to do that. But one of the compelling reasons to do that
was the fact that we had a discussion the other day and it was brought to our attention
that in searching the literature on the Holy Spirit and the things that are being ascribed
to the Spirit today that are not true about Him, and about His works, the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit has gone, in a sense, unprotected. The truth of the Holy Spirit has gone unaffirmed,
in this sense, that it was the…maybe the early or mid-1990’s since there was any
definitive book produced on the true person and work of the Holy Spirit. Evangelicals have gone silent on this issue
under the intimidation of that third column. This is unacceptable, we cannot allow this
to go on, the Holy Spirit to be grieved, quenched, insulted and blasphemed. It’s amazing to me that the evangelical
world doesn’t tolerate attacks on God the Father. When there came an attack a few years ago
called the Openness Theology which denied that God knew the future, denied His omniscience,
it not only denied that He knew the future, it denied that He could control the future. This is a massive attack on the nature of
God and evangelicals rose up in mass to denounce that attack of Openness Theology and became
prolific in providing material for that denunciation. Over the last fifteen years or so, twenty
years, there have been assaults on the person of Christ, assaults on His nature but more
directly on His work on the cross, the doctrine of justification, the biblical doctrine of
justification at the heart of the gospel, most notably in a movement called The New
Perspective on Paul which was a denial of the doctrine of Imputation and Justification. There is no end of literature that has been
amassed, a huge library of literature defending the doctrine of Justification, defending the
Son of God against these attacks. But no one member of the Trinity in this same
period of time has been attacked nearly to the degree that the Holy Spirit has been attacked
and I say for about ten years there has been virtually nothing to come to the defense of
a biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit. And as a result, there is confusion if not
indifference toward Him and a lack of ability to worship Him for whom He is and He should
be worshiped. We understand blasphemy of the Holy Spirit
from non-Christians. We understand blasphemy of the Holy Spirit
from false Christians and false teachers. But we as Christians while not blaspheming
the Holy Spirit can be guilty of grieving the Holy Spirit. And it is a grief to the Holy Spirit, of course,
for us to sin because we sin against Him who is in us, but is a grief to the Holy Spirit
to think wrongly about Him, to underestimate what He does, to be unappreciative or ungrateful
to fail to worship Him out of a grasp of the wondrous grace and the wondrous power of His
continuing work on our behalf all the way to eternal glory. So we have been looking at Romans 8 to refocus
on the Holy Spirit, to fully embrace Him in our worship. We know that God the Father initiated the
work of salvation. God the Son validated and demonstrated the
work of salvation, and the Holy Spirit activates and completes the work of salvation in the
believer. We have literally began to catalogue the work
of the Holy Spirit and for us as believers, He regenerates us, He participates in our
justification, He sanctifies us, He confirms our adoption as sons of God, He indwells us,
He baptizes us, immerses us in to the union with other believers that we call the body
of Christ. He gives us spiritual gifts by which we minister
to one another. He strengthens us in the inner man for all
righteousness. He guides us. He produces right attitudes in us. He delivers us from sin. He illuminates the Scripture to our understanding. But His greatest work and that which brings
us the greatest joy is that He guarantees our future glory, He guarantees our eternal
glory. And, of course, at this point the Pentecostal
Charismatic Movement renders against Him one of the greatest insults of all by denying
the doctrine of eternal security, perseverance of the saints, and attacking His most wondrous
work by claiming that He does not necessarily keep all believers secure and safe until eternal
glory. This week I was reading the writings of Charles
Finney whose ministry attacked a lot of things in the Scripture, not the least of which was
this doctrine. Finney said, “You are sealed by the Spirit
but you can shatter the seal.” The testimony of the Word of God is not consistent
with that error. Listen to the words of Ephesians 1:13 and
14. “In Him…that is in Christ…you also after
listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you
were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise who is given as a pledge of our inheritance
with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession to the praise of His glory.” We are God’s possession; God will redeem
us to the praise of His own glory. The Holy Spirit is given as a pledge of that
future redemption which is called our inheritance and that is why He is identified as the Spirit
of promise because He is the guarantee of God’s promise of heaven. Peter similarly writes, “Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to His great mercy has caused us
to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved
in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God for a salvation to be revealed
in the last time.” The Holy Spirit is the seal, the guarantee,
the down payment, the first fruits, the earnest, the power, the protector of every true believer
who brings us to final glory. That becomes the theme of Romans 8 starting
in verse 17. Verse 17, you first read the word “glorified,”
and from then on to verse 39, it is all focused on our future glory and the plans that God
has to secure us to that end. We’ve gone through all of that in great
detail. We’ve learned in verses 26 and 27 that the
Holy Spirit constantly from within every true believer is interceding for us in a communion
that is not in any language. It is too deep for words. It is inter-Trinitarian groaning in which
the Spirit intercedes, praying for our eternal glory consistently with God who knows what
His plans are and has purposed our glory. And the Spirit, as well, knows the plans of
God, the heart of God. So God has a plan. Christ provided for the fulfillment of that
plan. The Spirit prays for the completion of that
plan in accord with the will of God. As a result, verse 28 says, “Everything
works together for good.” Things as we live life, God has a good purpose
in them, that is true for His glory. But this is primarily talking about ultimate
final good, all things are working together for good because we have been loved by God
and love Him in return according to His purpose. So the Spirit then affects the good intention
and ending and purpose of God on our behalf. The plan of God, He foreknew us, He predestined
us, He called us, He justified us and He will glorify us and our glory will be conforming
us to the image of His Son, verse 29 says. We’ve gone through all of that in detail. God has a plan to choose people that He will
glorify. Christ provides the sacrifice that pays for
their sin to make the plan possible. The Holy Spirit becomes the power of the plan. He regenerates us, sanctifies us, protects
us and one day will raise us to glory. We are caught up in that plan. We are as secure as the Father’s plan because
what God purposes, He does. We are as secure as the Son’s provision. Christ actually paid in full for all our sins…not
a potential payment, but an actual payment. And we are, thirdly, as secure as the power
of the Holy Spirit who intercedes and who keeps us to glory. Now having said all of that great theology,
come to verse 31 where we dropped off last time, and Paul knows there will be some objections. So he assumes that there would be objections
from some who would say, “Well maybe there are some persons who can change this. Maybe there are some persons who can influence
a dramatic alteration in the plan of God. Like Finney says, “You can shatter the seal.” I read a couple of other writers who hold
that view and they said the same thing. “The Holy Spirit seals you as long as you
don’t break the seal.” Is that possible? So we could ask the question, “Are there
some humans that can do that? What shall we say to these things? Are there some humans that can do it?” The answer, verse 31, “If God is for us,
who’s against us?” Are there humans stronger than God? If God is for us, does it really matter who
might be against us? Does it matter who might want to destroy our
faith? If God is for us, that settles it because
there is no power greater than God. There is no human or human system, or human
religion, or human influence, or human society, or human form of education, or human pressure
that is greater than God. “Well,” you say, “maybe God would do
it. Maybe God would be weary of us.” God? Verse 32 answers that. “He who didn’t spare His own Son but delivered
Him over for us all?” You mean God who when we were enemies gave
us the best gift, His Son? He would turn against us? The end of verse 32, “How will He not also
with Him, with His Son, freely give us all things?” That’s an argument from the greater to the
lesser. “If when we were enemies He gave the best
gift to save us, will He not now that we are children of His give us lesser gifts to keep
us?” That’s just logical. That’s the argument from the greater to
the lesser. God who did the most for us gave the best
gift when we were enemies of His, will do whatever lesser things He needs to do now
that we’re His sons to keep us. Somebody might say, “Well what about Satan? Maybe Satan can pull us out of the hands of
God, he’s very powerful.” He tried it with Job, he tried it with Peter,
he tried it with Paul and he tried it with the high priest in Zachariah chapter 3, you
have four illustrations of it in Scripture. He is identified here in verse 33, “Who
will bring a charge against God’s elect?” Or verse 34, “Who is the one who condemns?” Who is the one who is always before God condemning
us? Who’s the accuser of the brethren?” Revelation 12:10. Satan and his demons as well, gather around
the presence of God and bring endless accusations against believers night and day, it says in
Scripture. Can he succeed? The accuser of the brethren? Could he break Job’s faith? No. Could he break Peter’s faith when he tried
to sift Peter? Could he break Paul when a messenger of demons
literally were tearing into the ministry of Paul? Was that enough to shatter Paul? Can he successfully bring a condemning accusation
that will cause God to turn? Well for one thing, saving faith can’t be
broken, the purpose of God can’t be thwarted, but you also have the additional reality of
Christ at the right of the Father interceding for us against all accusations and saying
again and again, “For that I paid in full in My death.” Well then somebody might suggest, “Boy,
we’re in trouble if Christ turns against us. What if Christ were to turn against us?” Verse 34, “What? Christ Jesus is He who died, yea rather who
was raised, who is at the right hand of God.” In other words, He died for us, He was raised
for us, His death and resurrection were the perfect satisfaction of God and thus He was
exalted at the right hand of God, having fully accomplished our redemption and who also intercedes
for us. He is the great high priest who intercedes
for us, our great heavenly advocate. It won’t be any humans, because God is more
powerful than they. It won’t be God because He gave us the best
when we were enemies. It won’t be Satan because he can’t successfully
bring a condemnation against us; Christ has already paid in full for them. It won’t be Christ; He ever lives to make
intercession for us. Only one possibility remains then. Us. You can break the seal. You can shatter the seal, as Finney put it. Can you? Why would you do that? Oh, circumstances in life. Well life could get pretty tough. As long as everything is going good,” that
was the argument with Job, wasn’t it? He’s blessed, he’s rich, he’s got it
all, family, crops, animals, wealth…no wonder he’s faithful. Can we literally exercise power to sever our
relationship to the Lord? Can our faith dissolve, break, crumble under
certain circumstances? So we go from persons in verses 32 to 34,
31 to 34, to circumstances in verses 35 to 37, follow them, it’s just pretty simple. This is worst case scenario. The question is: Who will or what will brought
by who…who behind all these whats; there’s a who. If there’s tribulation, distress, persecution,
famine, nakedness, peril, sword, somebody’s responsible for that. These are the kind of circumstances that are
extreme. Can extreme circumstances destroy our faith,
cause us to abandon the Holy Spirit? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Just a reminder that what holds us is the
love of Christ for us. That’s what’s hold us, the love of Christ
for us. It’s mentioned in verse 39, by the way,
as the love of God…the love of God. And I might add, it encompasses the love of
the Holy Spirit. We are loved by the Trinity. Can something happen to cause that love to
be broken? Well let’s paint a picture of extremity. Seven hypothetical realities escalating, tribulation…tribulation,
that’s outside pressure. Things are going bad on the outside and this
assumes…this assumes attacks coming at us. The word thlipsis means it’s a squeezing,
outward difficulty, rejection, trouble, harm. It’s putting pressure on us on the outside. The next word, distress, is a word that refers
to inside pressure. It’s two words that mean to be crunched
into a narrow space, but it has to do with the inside. When outside pressure comes in, it has an
effect on the inside, right? You start to react to it, fear, anxiety, doubt,
questions, dread and you become victimized by a certain level of panic. You lose your sense of confidence because
the pressure is so great. Can pressure come on the outside that can
cause you to be so compressed on the inside that you literally are led into fear and anxiety
and get worse? And then persecution. This is abuse, abuse and for the purpose of
this argument by Paul, it would be abuse for the testimony of Jesus, physical suffering,
mental suffering, things are really going badly for you now. This is the worst case scenario. You’ve got all kinds of issues on the outside
crushing you in, they get on the inside and they begin to produce anxiety, fear and dread
and then it gets worse, outright persecution, diogmos breaks out at the hands of Christ
rejecters. It gets extreme because famine follows. You don’t get food. You’re deprived, maybe you’re in jail,
you’re in prison. That is not the end of it, it gets even worse. You’re in rags. There’s no provision for you. You end up naked, you need clothes. It gets worse. You’re in peril, you’re on the dangerous
edge and finally they start rattling a sword. It’s the end. Can that do it? That’s the worst case scenario. You’re about to be martyred. You’re about to have your head hacked off. Well by the way, that’s Paul’s personal
testimony and it happened more than once that he got to the brink of peril. And it finally happened that his head was
cut off by a sword. Can that drive you to doubt? Can that drive you to reject Jesus Christ? Can that drive you to turn away from Christ? Turn away from God? Can that do it? And he quotes from Psalm 44 to say that this
is kind of the experience that the people of God have had through history, not just
us. He’s quoting from Psalm 44, there’s a
plea from the people of God in the Old Testament for God to deliver them for they’re in distress. For Your sake we’re being put to death all
day long, we’re considered sheep to be slaughtered. They were suffering in the past, as you know,
Israel suffered at the hands of its enemies many times, being connected to God can be
a very dangerous situation. It happened then, it happens now. And when it happens, is that enough to shatter
us, smash the seal? One of the wonderful treasures that I have
is an original set of the Foxes Book of Martyrs. Three volumes. You stack them up, they’re that thick…and
they’re this big…huge things. Foxes Book of Martyrs contains the testimony
of literally hundreds, and hundreds and hundreds of people who went through that process that
Paul just described here and ended up at the sword or the flame, burned at the stake or
myriad ways that they were executed. And the books are a testimony to the fact
that their faith did not fail, could not fail because they had a faith designed by God,
a supernatural faith just like yours. “In this you greatly rejoice,” Peter goes
on to say, “For a little while if necessary you’ve been distressed,” there’s that
same word, “by various trials so that the proof of your faith being more precious than
gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise and
glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” And then he says this, “You don’t see
Him, you love Him, even them you love Him.” You don’t turn on Him, you don’t resent
Him, you love Him. You love Him all the way to death. Verse 37 sums it up. “In all these things we overwhelmingly conquer
through Him who loved us.” We love Him because…what?...He loved us
first. No, there’s no circumstance that’s going
to break this. There is no circumstance that will separate
us from the love of Christ. There’s no circumstance that will separate
us from the love of God. There is no person who will separate us from
that love, the love of the Trinity. It is not possible; there is no power that
can shatter our faith. There is no power that can break the seal
of the Spirit. There is no…there is no accusation against
us that Christ has not paid for in full. There is no higher court than God and there’s
no greater power than the secure power of the Holy Spirit. And we come out, hupernikomen, hupernikao,
you get the word Nike from the Greek verb to conquer, to be the victor, super victor,
huper-victor. We are more than conquerors; we overwhelmingly
conquer not in in our own strength, but through Him who loved us…through Him who loved us. Trial, no matter how severe, tests our faith
and proves it true. Therefore it’s to our greater good and our
greater joy, even in the most severe suffering. It does something else. It earns an eternal weight of glory in the
life to come. This kind of extremity, severity makes a nobler
Christian here and a stronger Christian, not a weaker one, and one whose faith is firm
and whose assurance is settled, it’s the proof of your faith when it stands that test. It proves you have the real things and that’s
a gift of God to rejoice over, and it also leads to a greater reward. Paul wrote this while he was in Corinth in
the winter and he had no idea, nor did the church at Rome to whom he wrote that a short
time would elapse and then they would see him in this very situation. He would stand in need of the very comforting
truths which he wrote in this chapter because all the things that are written in the list,
he would experience. He would himself be, this time, killed by
a sword. And the readers in Rome would be caught up
in persecution, men and women whose blood would soak the sands of the great Roman arenas
and amphitheaters. But the honor of Christ and the love of Christ
was safe in their keeping because they were safe in His keeping. They didn’t need to fear any of these things,
including death, they were mauled by wild beasts, they were soaked in tar and lit as
torches. They fought with men and beasts and hells
demons but they were safe in the love of Christ, safe in the love of God, safe in the protecting
love of the Holy Spirit. Safe until they entered into glory. Paul ends by saying, “We’re super conquerors.” And then there’s a beautiful closing refrain,
verses 38 and 39, that almost shouldn’t be explained, it should just be read, or sung. “For I am convinced…are you? Are you convinced of this great truth? I am persuaded, I am confident, I have come
to a settled conclusion that neither death, the great enemy, or life with all its dangers
and difficulties, its temptations and troubles, nor angels, holy angels, hypothetically, nor
principalities, unholy angels, demons, nor things present, nor things to come, the here
and now or the future, nor powers…that’s plural in the New Testament and when it’s
used plural in the New Testament, the Greek form, it refers to miracles, mighty works,
some supernatural power…nothing, so far, not death, not life, not holy angels, not
fallen angels, not anything happening now or anything in the future, not any supernatural,
mighty, transcendent power, nor height,” that is a term that refers to a star at the
apex of its orbit…nor depth, bathos, that’s the star at the lowest point of its orbit,
nothing at the highest point of the universe, or the lowest point of the universe…nothing,
nor any other created thing, nothing in life, nothing in death, nothing in the world of
angels, nothing in the world of demons, nothing in time, nothing in eternity, no miracle power,
nothing on earth, nothing in heaven from the edges of space, nothing, no created thing
in the entire created universe will be able to separate us from the love of God which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Jeremiah 31:3, God says, “I’ve loved you
with an everlasting love.” That, dear friends, is because we are kept
by the Holy Spirit. We need to worship Him for that gracious work. Let’s pray. Lord, we thank You that we have been able
to look at the glory of our salvation in this wonderful way, through the ministry in particular
of the Holy Spirit. We know that Christ even went to the cross
in the power of the Holy Spirit. As we come to remember His death for us, we
want to be grateful from the bottom of our hearts for this massive work of salvation
that began in eternity past with election, went through the cross, out the open tomb,
and is produced in us by the ongoing ministry of the dear Holy Spirit. We worship You, O God, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, for this mighty work of amazing grace. We thank You for it. As we come now to remember the cross of Christ,
cleanse our hearts; fill us with praise, praise as it should be offered to You, our great
God.
