Avoiding Counterfeit Violins, Part 2

The Holy Spirit is that token indwelling us, reminding us, by the way, that we're headed there to give to us his betrothed, his beloved, as a promise that there's more coming, that there's a wedding, that there's a marriage supper of the Lamb, that we're heading there. We're heading toward the eternal glory of face-to-face communion with Christ as his everlasting bride. A day is coming when our relationship with God will be face-to-face. He's promised us eternity in heaven with him. But in the meantime, he wants us to enjoy fellowship with him now. That's why he sent the Holy Spirit to live in us, to lead us and guide us. We're looking at the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer today. This is Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. Stephen's been in a series from 1 John called After Darkness, right?

On our last broadcast, he began a message called Avoiding Counterfeit Violins. He concludes that message next. So let's just kind of back up here this morning and put the pieces together and kind of discover this third person member of the Godhead who is either overly emphasized or rather pathetically underappreciated. The Holy Spirit. Now John has informed us here that every believer, and I emphasize that, every believer has been anointed by the Spirit. Not just the really super spiritual Christian. Not just the believer who never misses church or never loses his temper.

No, no. Every believer that will seek to reform us after the image of Christ. So let's take some time to just revel in the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Hopefully, Lord willing, we'll walk out of here more committed to listening to and walking with not just God the Father and God the Son, but God the Holy Spirit. Now for starters, keep in mind that each member of the Godhead is attributed certain functions. As you study the Bible, you'll discover they're working in perfect harmony. Three persons of the Godhead.

Some functions overlap. Some are shown to be more specific in their relationship to one member of the Godhead. For instance, you read in Genesis 1 that God created the heavens and the earth, and you go over to Colossians 1 and you discover it was Jesus who literally spoke. He is the Word that created all there is.

So keep that in mind. There are some functions specifically geared toward or accomplished by the different members of the Godhead. We're given several functions of the Holy Spirit that effectively enables us to walk with and live for our triune God.

I thought it was wonderful. Gary doesn't know what I'm preaching, but the song selected for today had to do with praising our triune God. In fact, we sang one hymn text that sang glory to the Holy Spirit. Now we're given several functions of the Spirit of God, and I can't give you all of them, but let me give you four of them. The Holy Spirit equips us for every aspect of service.

In fact, his work is so comprehensive and frankly ignored and not even seen, and he's all right with that, but I think we ought to pay attention when we can and when we notice. But you find him in the New Testament referred to as the Spirit of Truth, that is the Spirit that gives truth, John 14, 17. He's referred to as the Spirit of Grace, Hebrews 10, 29.

He's called the Spirit of Life, Romans 8, verse 2, the Spirit of Glory, 1 Peter 4, 14. Frankly, every aspect of the Christian's life and service intersects with truth and grace and life and glory. These are the genuine signatures, so to speak, of the Spirit of God on our heart and life. The real item, we will find him stamping his name upon that which is truth and grace and life and glory.

Let me give you another one. The Holy Spirit not only equips us for service, he leads us into holy living. Paul reminded the Corinthian believers that their bodies were literally the temple of the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 19. Every believer is permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit. But then Paul tells the Ephesian believers in Ephesians 5, 18 to be filled with the Spirit. Well, how can you be filled with someone who already infills you or indwells you?

Isn't that a contradiction? No, the word Paul uses for filling in Ephesians 5, 18, be filled with the Holy Spirit as a command, it's the word for controlled. You could translate it dominated, be dominated, be under the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit who indwells you. So to be filled by the Spirit is to be led by the Spirit.

Oh, by the way, since we're talking about someone in the Bible referred to as the Holy Spirit, you can rest assured that if he's doing the leading in your lives, he will be leading you toward holy living, right? In fact, one of the marks of deceivers is hypocrisy. They say they represent God, they say they represent the Holy Spirit, but their lives are not holy. Jude, in his little letter, describes false teachers as those who follow after their own lusts. They live for earth, for what they wear, how they're bejeweled, what they drive, what they live in.

Everything's about earth, and their message is effectively how you can get everything you want on earth. That's how you can help spot those liars. He says in Jude's letter, or Jude writes, they speak arrogantly, they flatter people for the sake of gaining an advantage. Note this, they are worldly-minded, devoid of the Holy Spirit. They have Holy Spirit stamped on their literature, but it's an imitation, it's fake, because the true work of the Holy Spirit leads his redeemed into living holy lives. So the Holy Spirit not only equips us for service and leads us into holy living.

Let me give you another one. He provokes in us genuine worship. If you go back to verse 27 of 1 John, we're told that the Spirit abides in us, that we don't need anybody to teach us. He'll teach us all things. Now don't get confused there.

Keep in mind the context here is one of false teachers. The Gnostics were coming along and saying, you really need us to teach you something so that you can come to know God through Jesus Christ. We've got the secret.

We've got the new thing. We've got the incantation. John is saying, no, you don't need any of that. The Spirit of God will teach you the truth related to the genuine gospel of Jesus Christ. And so he's saying here that specifically the Spirit of God protects us from false teaching that denies Jesus as the anointed, the Christos, the Messiah. In fact, go back up at verse 22.

You remember this one. He says, who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? Christos, the anointed one. This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son, the one who denies the equal deity of Father and Son, and the one who denies that Jesus is the Messiah.

That's what John is rolling all up in that one phrase. In other words, here's how the Spirit of God will help you spot the counterfeit. You'll detect the deceiver by how he seeks to draw your heart away from Jesus as equally divine with the Father. He'll also seek to draw your heart away from worshiping God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. You'll spot a counterfeit gospel that way, a counterfeit religion, a counterfeit preacher, a counterfeit author, a counterfeit teacher by the fact that they will talk about God but they will not talk about his equally divine Son, the Lord Jesus.

They will not lead you to worship Jesus. In his commentary, D. Edmund Hebert illustrated this by retelling an incident where Dr. Harry Ironside, who once pastored Moody Church, he pastored Moody Church back in the early 1900s. Ironside was in Los Angeles on one particular day and he came across a man preaching in the street, so he stopped to listen. And as he listened, he understood that this man was actually detailing a heretical view of Christ held by a well-known, prominent, and growing in popularity cult. As he stood there realizing that, he happened to look across the crowd, the small crowd there, and he noticed an older gentleman standing there and listening intently and every once in a while it seemed that he sort of smiled and nodded to himself and Ironside said he was filled immediately with compassion for a man that was obviously being deceived by this false teacher. So he kind of made his way around the crowd while the preacher continued until eventually he was standing there next to him. After the preacher finished, he struck up a conversation with this older gentleman and found out that the older gentleman claimed to be a Christian.

And so Ironside said, well, again to identify the genuineness of that statement and label, he said, well, what did you think about what the man preached about Jesus? The older man responded, well, I don't know if I could clearly answer all his arguments, but I do know that as he was preaching, something inside of me was saying, that's a lie. That's a lie.

That's a lie. That would be the Holy Spirit. In his Gospel account, the Apostle John tells us that the signature work of the Holy Spirit ultimately glorifies Jesus Christ and exalts him as more than a mere teacher, a mere man, a mere prophet, but God the Son, the God-man, God incarnate.

Now Jesus himself even said to his disciples that after he ascended, the Spirit of God would descend and glorify the Son. And that incorporates of course the words of Christ as well, that this would be exalted, this would be held as our authority. It is the words and works of Jesus Christ.

It is the words of revelation through his prophets and then ultimately his apostles delivering the truth of who Jesus Christ is and the genuine, legitimate Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And you have to be on the lookout obviously because so much of what's out there doesn't say necessarily, well, we don't believe that God exists. It's we believe God exists.

Let us define him for you. In fact, a few years ago, a bestseller basically deceived a lot of people. I think a lot of people were already deceived and they just sort of fell into it. I can't imagine a Christian not picking up on it. In fact, I believe Christians would, but let me just give this to you and you spot the line. It was entitled, Conversations with God. Okay, now right there, the little flag in your mind ought to be going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, okay? Maybe you buy something else at the Christian bookstore and not that one.

But let's say you pick it up. He sold, by the way, 3 million of these. And in it he claimed to have direct conversations with God. Okay, again, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

In fact, you ought to just hide them under the bookshelf there in the bookstore so nobody else... No, never mind. Okay. At any rate, he's basically going to define a God who suits any religion and he doesn't claim to be the Christian's God. So this is really erudite.

This is new. Listen as Walsh, the author, writes of one of his conversations with God. God speaks first. I cannot tell you my truth until you stop telling me yours, Walsh.

But my truth about God comes from you, God. Who said so? Walsh. Others? God. What others?

Walsh. Leaders? Ministers? Books? The Bible, for heaven's sake? God. Those are not authoritative sources. Walsh.

They aren't? God. No.

Walsh. Then what is? God. Listen to your highest thoughts. Listen to your experience. Listen to your feelings.

Whenever any one of these differ from what you've been told by your teachers or you read in your books, forget them. Forget their words. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I would hope you'd never buy any of those because halfway through that conversation you're going, that's a lie. That's a lie.

That's a lie. The Holy Spirit will never have you say, listen to your feelings because they are more authoritative than this book. But do you spot the lie in your teacher or your preacher or the guy you listen to on television when what he says has really nothing to do with this? But he's given you what God told him, what he's discovered, what new secret he has, or what God said to him.

Do you spot it then? You see, when Jesus is describing the ministry of the Holy Spirit to his disciples, in John's Gospel over at chapter 16, he says that the Spirit is effectively going to exalt the Son. That word exalt is the word that gives us our word doxology. It's the word doxa. It gives us our word doxology.

Doxology means to think correctly. It means to vindicate. It means to say something of someone so they are thought well of. So what's the Holy Spirit doing? He is vindicating the Son.

He's leading us to think highly of the Son. He's leading us to worship the Son. The false teacher discredits Christ. The Holy Spirit vindicates Christ. The false deceivers diminish the deity of Christ. The Holy Spirit will exalt the deity and glory of Christ. False religions will rob worship away from Jesus Christ.

True religion will promote the worship of Jesus Christ. And you'll know that it has the stamp, the genuine mark of the Holy Spirit as Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone as the Son of God, the way, the truth, and the life is the object of our faith and worship. There's one more ministry of the Holy Spirit I'll briefly address. Fourthly, the Holy Spirit serves as God's promise of heaven.

God's promise of heaven. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that the Holy Spirit is God's earnest payment given to them. Paul writes it this way, God also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.

2 Corinthians 1.22, I love that phrase. He's given us the Spirit and the Spirit is our pledge. The word pledge could be translated down payment. We could call it earnest money. It's a pledge and a promise and you put something down that costs you but it really simply communicates there's more to come, right?

So the Holy Spirit is a pledge and a promise from the Father and I like to think of it this way. I like to think of it as an engagement ring because it costs the giver something and it communicates a relationship and a commitment between both the giver and the recipient. Many of you guys can remember the day you proposed to your wife. If you can't remember, just nod along with me, okay?

Play along. I was old-fashioned. I wanted the ring. I wanted the ring in my possession so that when she said yes, I could solder it on her finger and no, so that I could give it to her and it did a number of things. This was my pledge at my cost that there was more coming, that there was a marriage ceremony ahead and it also told the world, by the way, it gave a message to them as well. It meant she's no longer on the market.

You know, all those creepy guys out there, she is no longer available, right? She's mine, observed, even though we're not married yet. She effectively has agreed to this proposal and it also reminds her of that as well, that she's effectively mine, that we are pledged to each other. From the way I remember it when she said yes and put the ring on, the clouds parted and the sun appeared and the angels sang the Hallelujah Chorus.

Is that how you guys remember it? Do this right now. Very good.

Okay. Listen, the Holy Spirit has been given to us like that ring. He's a pledge. He cost the bridegroom, didn't he?

Everything. To give to us his betrothed, his beloved as a promise that there's more coming, that there's a wedding, that there's a marriage supper of the Lamb, that we're heading there. We're heading toward the eternal glory of face-to-face communion with Christ as his everlasting bride. The Holy Spirit is that token indwelling us, reminding us, by the way, that we're headed there. Do we really want to do that? Do we really want to go there?

Do we really want to live like that? You've got a wedding ahead of you. The Spirit of God internally reminds us as he exalts the glory of our betrothed to live in light of that coming glory. Now in the meantime, John writes here that this Spirit, verse 27, teaches us all things. Literally, he translates for us what we need to confirm the truth of Jesus Christ, and specifically about Jesus Christ. We still need to study the Word. We still need teachers.

They're God's gifts to the body. There's still discipline involved in learning the Scriptures. But John teaches us that the Spirit will teach us all things, that is, all things related to Christ. So he will translate to our hearts the truth about Christ. And as we encounter different things during our day, he'll translate the truth of Jesus Christ to our hearts to keep us on track. So it's very important who's doing the translating in our lives, isn't it?

Ken Hughes, in his wonderful little commentary on this book and at this verse, told the story of why it's so important to make sure who your translator is. He wrote, Jorge Rodriguez was a Mexican bank robber who operated along the Texas border around the turn of the century. He was so successful that the Texas Rangers assigned an extra posse to try to stop him. Late one afternoon, one of the special Rangers saw Jorge slipping across the river and he trailed him all the way to his village where he'd been hiding out. He watched as Jorge first mingled with the townspeople and then went over to his favorite cantina to relax. The Rangers slipped in and around and into that cantina and managed to get the drop on Jorge and with a pistol now pointed at his head he said, I know who you are Jorge Rodriguez and I have come to arrest you and to retrieve the money you've stolen from the banks in Texas and unless you tell me where it is I'm actually authorized to shoot you. I'll take you in dead or alive and I'll shoot you here and now.

Now there's a problem. Jorge doesn't speak English and the Texas Ranger doesn't know any Spanish. So they're at this verbal impasse and about that time a villager had been standing nearby volunteered he said to the Ranger I'm bilingual would you like me to act as a translator and the Ranger nodded and the villager proceeded to put the words of the Rangers thread into terms Jorge could understand Jorge knew he was caught the Rangers gun with a trigger cock was aimed and ready to his head. Jorge answered to the translator please tell the Ranger that I have not spent any of that money. Please tell him that if he will go to the town well in this village face north count down five stones at that well he'll find a loose one pull it out and all the money is there in a sack behind the rock. Now please tell him quickly so he'll spare my life and the translator with a very solemn expression on his face turned to the Ranger and in perfect English said Jorge Rodriguez is a brave man.

He says he is ready to die. You better be careful who your translator is right. We're told here that the translator of truth into our hearts and lives is none other than the Holy Spirit. He will not lie to God about us. In fact one other ministry we didn't even talk about is that he takes our prayers that we can't even communicate any groanings we can't understand communicates with the father. He won't lie about God to us either. So John ends that verse by saying you notice this.

You might get out your pencil. You abide in him. Now he's not telling us to make some kind of effort now after all we've learned we really got to work hard to stay saved. Tell what he's saying like the verb here to abide is in the present tense and the indicative mode meaning you do abide in him. You do.

You might write that little word in there for the English translation to be a little clearer. You do abide in him. So abide. In other words don't ignore him. Make room for him as it were in your life.

Don't forget him. Don't go through a day without talking to him. Depend on him. Begin the practice of saying thank you Spirit of God for that. As you learn something from the word thank you Spirit of God for that. Make much of him. Listen to his word. Take note of promptings of warnings of encouragements that would agree with scripture.

Why? Because he is the divinely given equipment to help you detect as it were imitation violins that just look real and the signature is there. He is the one who internally helps us understand as it relates to Jesus Christ counterfeit ministers counterfeit doctrines even counterfeit Christians so that we glorify Christ as the divine son so that we worship him as the living Lord so that we anticipate him are our soon coming beloved bridegroom and our coming King that was Stephen Davey and a message called avoiding counterfeit violins. It was the ninth and final lesson in his series called After Darkness Light. If you missed any of the lessons in the series we've posted them to our website.

You can go there and listen to them again. Before we leave you today I want to ask you to think about the last few Christmas seasons. Do you struggle to keep your focus on Jesus during the Christmas season?

We have a resource to help you. We want to help you lead your family in an intentional Christ honoring activity. It's called the Advent event.

This is a fun easy and enriching family activity to help focus attention on the birth of Jesus while discovering the big picture of God's plan throughout the entire Bible. Children and grandchildren of all ages will enjoy the craft the stories the sounds and the motions that make up the Advent event and best of all it fits easily into your busy schedule. Each morning in December we're going to send you an activity for that day. It takes just a few minutes each evening for you to gather as a family. Christmas might seem like it's a ways off but it's important that you sign up for this resource now. That's because it begins December 1. Everyone who signs up for this activity will receive an email from us each morning in December. So if you're a parent a grandparent you're going to want to be part of the Advent event.

If not tell someone else about it. We'd like as many people as possible to have the opportunity to enjoy this free resource. All the information you need is at wisdomonline.org forward slash Advent. On our next broadcast Stephen begins a series examining the life of Daniel. Join us for that here on Wisdom for the Heart. you