Restoring Worship of the Holy Spirit B

Here's a question for you. Well, John MacArthur's answer today on grace to you might surprise you and change how you worship God. So stay tuned for his study called Lessons for a Modern-Day Disciple. Now John, today we're going to hear the second half of the message that you began last Friday. First, I want to ask you a question which was prompted by the comments you made in the studio prior to Friday's message.

You sort of passed over this very quickly, but I want you to expand on this question. What is the primary work of the Holy Spirit? The primary work of the Holy Spirit, as stated by our Lord himself, is to reveal Christ.

That's the primary work. He will show you Christ. That's what Jesus said when he was talking to his disciples in the upper room. In addition to that, it is to convict of sin and righteousness and judgment, which ties into the gospel. The work of the Holy Spirit is to convict the sinner of sin and then of righteousness and then of judgment and then show him the glories of Christ.

In 2 Corinthians 3.18, the Apostle Paul says, as we gaze at the glory of the Lord, we're transformed into his image by the Holy Spirit. So the Spirit's gospel ministry is to show the sinner his sin, show the righteousness of God, show the subsequent judgment on sin, and then reveal Christ, who is the remedy, the one who delivers from sin and judgment. I've been talking about a new booklet on the Holy Spirit that we will send free of charge to anyone who requests it. The title, The True Work of the Holy Spirit. The True Work of the Holy Spirit.

It looks at how the Holy Spirit draws unbelievers to Christ, convicts us of sin, allows us to have fellowship with God, seals our salvation, and more marvelous works. So contact us today and request your free copy of the brand new booklet, The True Work of the Holy Spirit. But first, follow along as we consider the issue of restoring the worship of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, friend, you won't want to miss this message. Afterwards, I'll pass along our contact information so you can request a free copy of John's new booklet, The True Ministry of the Holy Spirit. But for now, join John in Romans chapter 8 as he begins the lesson. If you would please open the Word of God to the eighth chapter of Romans and let's go back to the eighth chapter of Romans and taking a look at a great doctrine under the heading of restoring the worship of the Holy Spirit. Let's talk about the means of our security, the Spirit's intercession. This is one of the most gripping portions of the book of Romans, in my mind.

There's so much hope here and so much joy here, this thing just absolutely thrills me. Verses 26 and 27, in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness. For we don't know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. The means of our security is the Holy Spirit's intercession. Secondly, the motive for our security, the motive of our security for our security is the Father's intention. The Father's intention there at the end of verse 27, the Holy Spirit intercedes literally for the saints according to God...according to God. But it certainly means the will of God because that's what's spread out in the subsequent verses, verses 28, 29 and 30. And that leads us to the point that I really want to make.

All that was kind of just...I want to talk about the measure of our security, the height and breadth and length and depth. And this is the Son's innovation. It's a section in which Paul does what he likes to do. He creates imaginary objectors.

He imagines what the objections are going to be to this, okay? Now there are people who are going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can lose your salvation. In spite of the Spirit's intercession and in spite of the Father's intention, you can lose your salvation. In fact, this is said so often, this is probably the longest running debate in theology since the Reformation. You can lose your salvation.

And so, Paul says, okay, let's take a look at it. There's only two possible avenues from which things could come to take away your salvation, persons or circumstances, persons or events. So let's talk about persons. Are there any persons who could cause you to lose your salvation? Are there any persons who could reverse, verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation which triggers the whole chapter? Is there somebody who can undo the no condemnation status?

By the way, it brackets the chapter, no condemnation, verse 1, and no condemnation, verse 34, and in between the work of the Holy Spirit. But maybe there's somebody who can undo this whole thing. In spite of the Spirit's agonizing, groaning intercession, in spite of the Father's eternal intention, maybe somebody can undo this deal. First we could ask somebody human, maybe a person, a human being.

Could a human being do this? So in verse 31, Paul poses his sort of broad question about possible objections. He says, what then shall we say to these things? Okay, what are we going to say to this? I know, I'm waiting for the argument.

And somewhere between that statement and the next one, if God is for us, who is against us, he's thinking about people because he uses the word who. Who? Who?

Who? Can the Judaizers do it? Can the Judaizers go in to the church and just get the people so messed up that they all abandon grace and run over to law and circumcision and they all lose their salvation? Can the Judaizers do it?

Do they have that kind of power? What about...no, let's get a little closer. What about people in your family? What about the people in your family that you love who are so weary of your interest in Jesus Christ and would like to disconnect you from it? What about that? What about...what about secular education? What if you have a Christian kid who is truly in Christ and you send him off to the University of blah, blah, blah and he goes over there and some guy gets in the classroom and just absolutely dissects everything he believes, can he take away his faith?

What's the answer? If God is for us, what? You'd have to be more powerful than whom?

Yeah, lots of luck. That, by the way, is the conditional particle, A, of a full-filled condition and I wish it had been translated this way. Since God is for us, who can successfully be against us? And the answer to the question, of course the rhetorical question is there isn't anybody more powerful than God.

Isaiah 46, remember the former things long past. I am God, there is no other. I am God, there's no one like Me. Declaring the end from the beginning, saying, My purpose will be established and I will accomplish all My good pleasure. Well, okay, no people can do it but what about God?

He might just get so sick of us that He changes His mind. What about God? You know, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Any verse for any occasion. God gave it, God can take it away.

He can change His mind. Keeping us saved may just be too much trouble. And maybe at some point the Holy Spirit says, look, I give.

I'm done groaning for this one. Verse 32 answers that. He who didn't spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? That is a classic rabbinic argument from the greater to the lesser. If He gave His best gift, His own Son, when we were His enemies, will not He give the lesser gifts now that we are His children?

That's the argument from the greater to the lesser. Go back to Romans 5 and just remind yourself. Verse...well, verse 6, while we were still hopeless, Christ died for the...what?...ungodly. Hardly would one die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we'll be saved from the wrath of God through Him. In other words, if His death saved us when we were enemies, will not His life keep us now that we're children?

Argument from the greater to the lesser. God so loved that He gave to His enemies, His own Son. Well somebody says, okay...okay...Satan, what about Satan? Can Satan move in on us? Can Satan do it?

Can we fall out of God's power, out of God's hands, out of God's care? Well, verse 33 answers that because Satan is the accuser of the brethren, is he not? Who will bring a charge against God's elect?

Who does that all the time? Who stands before the throne of God at all times accusing the brethren? Satan, the book of Revelation says that's what he does, he did it with Job, right? He went before the throne of God and he just went after Job. You know, you see the same kind of thing as Satan accuses the high priest.

That's his...that's what he does. He comes after Peter. Can Satan dislodge us? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? Can Satan go before the throne of God as the accuser of the brethren and rattle off a litany of charges against us like the one in Zechariah 3, or like Job chapter 1? This is what he does, Revelation 12, 10 says.

Can he do it successfully? Can he damn us, katakrino? No, because God is the one who...what?...who justifies. Literally God the one justifying, God is the one justifying. God alone condemns and in our behalf God has justified us. He has declared us righteous in Christ, He can't at the same time make us guilty and there is no higher judge.

And that's His point. Where is Satan going to lay the accusation? God wrote the law, God enforced the law, God upholds the law and God legally justified us by imputing to us the righteousness of Christ and our sins to Christ in His death. That is why John Wesley said, whose hymns have a better theology than he did, bold shall I stand in that great day, for who ought to my charge shall lay?

Fully through Thee absolved I am from sin and fear, from guilt and harm. Please notice, who will bring a charge against God's elect? God's elect.

There it is again...election...election. Takes us all the way back to verse 29, foreknowledge, predestination. As Marcus Lune said, those who stand at the bar accused are not outlaws but God's elect.

Well you say, okay, there's only one other possibility. If it's not persons and if it's not God and if it's not Satan, maybe Christ, maybe Christ, maybe we disappoint Him. He brought us in, He could throw us out.

Really? Verse 34, who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus. Is He who died? Rather, who was raised? Who is at the right hand of God? Who also intercedes for us? Christ? He's not going to condemn us.

Fourfold protection. He died for us. What is more, He rose for us. What is more, He is at the right hand of God in our defense. And there He intercedes for us. There's no possibility that Christ would ever turn against us. That's kind of the high point of this section about Christ. And that's why I called it the measure of our security is that no matter what comes against us, it is the innovation of Christ as our Redeemer, the one who dies, the one who pays the penalty for our sin, all that the gospel contains, and then this incredibly wonderful work of intercession at the right hand of God. We know from the book of Hebrews that He ever lives to make intercession for us. He keeps on interceding for us. So again, you have the Holy Spirit in you and you have the Son of God at the right hand of the Father all interceding for you.

Say, well, wait a minute, there's one other possibility. It's not going to be other people. It's not going to be God. It's not going to be Satan. It's not going to be Christ.

And Paul knows it has to be answered. What about me? What about what if I just turn away? What if I defect? What if I sin the big sins? What if I decide not to believe, lose my faith? Well there would have to be some circumstance to make that happen, wouldn't there be?

What would make that happen? And so you start in verse 35 with a litany of questions that drive down that pathway. Would it be...what would it be that would separate us from the love of Christ? What would it be that would literally disconnect us from His love for us and our love for Him?

Both could be in that same phrase. What would it be? Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, or how about death, life, angels, principalities, things present, things to come, powers, height, depth, and the other created thing?

What? Here you're not talking about persons, you're talking about events and circumstances that come in to the believer's life. What if we fail? What if it gets too tough?

What if it's just hard? What if the constraints and issues and vicissitudes of life literally overwhelm us? So Paul, to make his point, starts out there in verse 35 asking who will separate us, or in this case, what will separate us from the love of Christ?

And he poses seven sort of personified realities. Let's try tribulation. Flipsis, pressure, affliction. This has to do with outward difficulty, could be accusation, could be rejection, it could be physical harm.

In fact, the English word tribulation comes from a Latin word which means a flailing, wooden leather instrument for beating chaff out of wheat. What if life just starts flailing us? Could that do it? What about distress? That's inward difficulty. Flipsis is outward, distress is inward, stenochoria has the idea of narrow, hemmed in, no way out. This is when everything goes wrong and it starts to affect the inside, inward difficulty, personal agonies, personal disappointments.

Could that do it? And then what about persecution? What about abuse because of Christ? But what about now it starts to mount. First you have some external pressure and these are sequential. And then that external pressure begins to cramp the inside. And what we suffer on the outside eventually comes inside, doesn't it? And then it begins to become anxiety and fear and doubt and questioning. And then it gets ramped up because what was just trouble and internal anxiety becomes persecution. And now could it be that if we get into a situation where, you know, we begin to suffer at the hands of Christ, rejecters, and it gets even worse and then comes famine, limas in the Greek. We don't have any food, we're deprived. Now the scene is escalating. Not only do we not have any food, but we don't have any clothes, we're cold and we're destitute. And then comes the word peril which means we are in imminent danger exposed to treachery and then the sword, machaira, that just cuts our head off. That's about as bad as it can get. The worst.

Along the way, at some point, do we bail out? By the way, that wasn't theory to Paul. Those were all personal experiences, every single one of those.

He experienced every one. Read 2 Corinthians 11, 23 to 29. And not just Paul, but you read a lot about that at the end of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.

Can that do it? The worst that life can possibly bring and it can come. That's why he quotes in verse 36 from Psalm 44, 22, an old plea for God to deliver Israel in the midst of its distress.

I mean, it can get bad. It can get hard being a Christian. Does that do it? One of the treasures I have among many is an original edition of Fox's book of martyrs.

There's three volumes and each is about this big and I have the original big, big volumes. This is a testimony from history that all of the stuff that I just read you cannot destroy saving faith. Those are the testimonies, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of testimonies that those things do not separate us from the love of Christ, but rather that verse 37 is true, in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. Why? Because we hold on?

No, because He holds on. We are hupernicomen, super conquerors. In fact, get this, trials work for our good. They work for our good because we are perfected by them, James 1.

They work for our good because our faith stands the test of trials and then we have the assurance of faith that comes through that confidence. Paul has nothing left to say except the two most magnificent verses of which he closes the chapter. I am convinced.

Are you? Are you convinced about this wondrous work of the Holy Spirit securing you to eternal glory? I'm convinced. A confident declaration and here again is the measure of the provision of Christ. He sweeps through all the extremities he can think of, death, life, angels, principalities, holy angels, demonic beings, things present, things to come, powers. I mean, that's it, death, the greatest enemy, life with all its dangers and difficulties, angels, the good angels, principalities, the evil fallen angels, things present, something here and now, things to come, something in the future, powers which means supernatural miracle kind of powers, that's the use of that word and it's plural in the New Testament, almost always means miracles, something miraculous, something supernatural, height which is a term which was used to describe a star and its zenith, something way out on the outer edge of the universe and depth, bathos, that's the time...that identifies the star at its lowest point of orbit from one end of the universe to the other and all the possible issues of life, can any of those or all of those individually or collectively separate us from the love of Christ? No, I am convinced that none of those things will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So yeah, but I know a guy in our church, he came a lot and he taught a Sunday school class and he left and he denies the faith. Listen to 1 John 2 19, they went out from us but they were not really of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.

But they went out so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. If you're a true believer, nothing can separate you because of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Is this not the most precious of all the ministries of the Holy Spirit, securing our eternal glory against everything in the entire universe, every person and every circumstance? I'm convinced and I give the Holy Spirit the worship that He is due for that. Jeremiah said it in Jeremiah 33, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Our Father, we thank You for the Word which is so profoundly rich and we have just touched the edges, feel like a little boy on the shore of a great vast ocean who scoops up a little bucket.

That's all we can do in our little bucket brains is hold on to some frail and inadequate thoughts about the vastness and the greatness of these divine economies. We're so thankful that the salvation You gave us when we didn't deserve it will reach its final intended end and one day we will see Christ and be like Him. Lord Jesus Christ, we thank You together, we thank You, we thank You for Your work on our behalf, Your work on the cross and the resurrection, Your ongoing work of defending us against the accuser. We thank You, blessed Holy Spirit, for continuing to groan within us, to agonize over our weakness and to bring us safely to glory.

And we know that Scripture says that it was the Spirit who raised Jesus who will raise us also. This will be Your final work on our behalf to raise us to glory and all whom You have regenerated and are sanctifying and are securing You will raise and we give You honor for that. Father, for Your plan, Christ for Your provision, Holy Spirit for Your power, we praise You. We worship You. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is a pastor, author, and chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. He's titled our current series Lessons for a Modern-Day Disciple. Now, as John mentioned before the sermon, his new booklet The True Work of the Holy Spirit is free for a limited time to anyone who'd like a copy.

It's an ideal complement to today's lesson on the third person of the Trinity. So be sure to request this booklet and see how the Holy Spirit powerfully blesses your life. Get in touch with us today. You can call our toll-free number, 855-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org. To make sure you grasp the Holy Spirit's amazing ministry and how He enables deeper fellowship with the Lord, request your free copy of The True Work of the Holy Spirit. Again, this new booklet is our gift to you.

All you have to do is ask for it. Call us at 855-GRACE or visit gty.org. And if you're looking for more resources on the Holy Spirit's work or any other biblical topic, let me encourage you to visit our website. We have thousands of free resources available on issues like the substance of faith, God's design for the family, the life of Christ, and much more. You can read blog articles and check out Q&As and download any of John's more than 3500 sermons.

Again, all of those resources and more are free at gty.org. Now for John and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for listening today and be back tomorrow for the next installment of Lessons for a Modern-Day Disciple. John MacArthur will be here unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.