The Promised Holy Spirit

Well, as the global W embraced the Enlightenment, thinking this

was going into the 18th and the 19th centuries, the spirit of

the age was to learn about man. We learn about ourselves from

studying man, and reason was elevated as the primary tool for

discerning truth. It's amazing that before, in the

Middle Ages, reason was everything.

Philosophy was everything. And then you have Aquinas saying

the queen of the sciences is theology.

That's where we got our theme for this Ephesians.

The queen of the letters is Ephesians.

And then amazingly, right after we go straight back and say no,

reason again took over and natural law took over as the

queen of the science. At by the time of the

Enlightenment, reason and natural law had supplanted

theology, which means that they set the rules for all other

sciences, including the study of Scripture and including

theology. And so with this came the the

higher criticism and the chipping away at inerrancy.

And with it came the quest for the historical Jesus, where they

began to to peel back what they perceived as layers of Scripture

and to degrade the public's confidence in the deity of Jesus

Christ. And in all this, the Trinity

became to be viewed as an addition to the doctrine of God.

And this is perhaps most apparent in the father of

liberal theology, modern liberal theology was Friedrich

Schleiermacher. And in his theology, he doesn't

talk about the Trinity in his book until the appendix.

You get to the appendix of his theology book, there's mention

of the Trinity and you even go to the the bastion of

conservative theology. You go to Princeton with Charles

Hodge, the greatest American mind, arguably at the time, the

greatest, the most popular American preacher at the height

of Princeton's conservative theology and influence and his

systematic theology. He spends 250 pages talking

about God before he ever mentions his Tri unity.

And so out of that, there's actually one man who kind of

corrected us back and got us back on track of thinking about

God as as a triune God, as a Trinitarian God.

And his name was Carl Bart, born May 1886.

He refocused the church because unlike Hodge, the discussion of

the Trinity was first in his doctrine of God.

It was first in his discussion of God.

And he said the doctrine of the Trinity is basically what

distinguishes the doctrine of God as Christian.

End Quote. And he said even Christ's

centrality is meant to point to and not away from the centrality

of the triune God. So there was a refocusing of the

church on Scripture as revelation.

We don't stand above it with our human tools and, and, and apply

ourselves to the Scripture, but rather we stand under the Bible

and we confess this is this is not written by a man, but men

under the inspiration of God. It's divine revelation.

And so we say when the Scriptures speak, the triune God

speaks and he rules and he reigns in our lives and our soul

and our heart and in this world through this open word.

And so we refocused as a church on Scripture as revelation.

We refocused on key passages, Trinitarian passages like

Ephesians 1/3 to 11. And so we're not like the spirit

of our age. We don't study, we don't have a

religion department. We have a theology department.

We don't study man to learn about man.

We study God to learn about ourselves.

And so we study the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the

Spirit. And so this is our supreme

source of authority. And one of the premier passages

about the Trinitarian God is Ephesians 1, three to 14.

You can begin to turn there. Two weeks ago, Paul shone the

spotlight on God the Father and he began this sentence.

And it was 12 verses 202 words in the original autograph, 32

prepositional phrases representing one sentence of God

the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

And as he shines the spotlight on the Father, he says that the

Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

It says that he chose you. That's the main verb of this

whole sentence because he's trying to give you a sense of

the sovereignty of God and your salvation.

And he tells you that he predestined you for adoption to

give you a sense of the purpose of your salvation, that you

would be in relationship to him, that he would adopt you, that he

would give you a family and a home, and that he would become

your heavenly Father. And uses that metaphor of you

are a child and he is your father.

And then you come to verses 7 to 10, our passage for last week.

God or Paul shone the spotlight on Jesus the Son of God.

And he said that he purchased you with his own blood.

He was your Redeemer. And as your Redeemer he

fulfilled 3 roles. He was your prophet making known

the will of God for your salvation.

He was your priest making atonement for your soul, and he

was your king by subduing all creation.

It said things in heaven and things on earth under himself,

and he subdued you to himself, which is why we bow the knee to

him and we confess him as Lord. He unites all things under

Christ. And today we're going to

continue to learn something about ourselves and our

salvation by shining the spotlight on God the Holy

Spirit, who He says is going to seal us for the day of

redemption. And that, that that's the

premier metaphor. God the Father adopts you, the

Son redeems you, the Spirit seals you.

And what he's emphasizing with that metaphor is you're being

set apart in this world for his purposes.

You're living for His glory, His ownership of you, the

authenticity or the genuineness of your faith and your eternal

security. By having a spirit, He says He's

guaranteeing your inheritance until you acquire possession of

it to the praise of His glory. And so, and all these things to

go all the way back to the beginning and all these things,

there is unity between the persons of the Godhead and what

they're accomplishing on your behalf.

All things in Scripture, be it creation or redemption, is are

from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.

And the same is true with your redemption.

It was according to the plan and foreknowledge of God the Father.

It was achieved through Jesus Christ in time, and it is

applied by the Holy Spirit. And so those that the Father

chose, the Son redeemed. Those that the Son redeemed, the

Spirit sealed. We saw through the Father was

the plan of redemption through the Son, the accomplishment of

it through the Spirit, the application of it.

So from everlasting to everlasting, God has been

building His church and He's loved His church.

He says He does it that we might be his people and that He might

be our God. And he says over and over again

in this Section 3 times, it's to the praise of his glory, to the

praise of his glory, to the praise of his glory.

That's the reason He bought his church.

And again, if you'll look to Ephesians 111, the spotlight now

shines on God the Holy Spirit. Let's read this section

together. Ephesians 111 to 14.

In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been

predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all

things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were

the first to hope in Christ, might be to the praise of His

glory in Him. You also, when you heard the

word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in

Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the

guarantee of our inheritance, until we acquire possession of

it to the praise of His glory. Go back to Ji Packer, one of the

favorites of the church he was famous for, or he was one of the

guys that popularized this idea that the Holy Spirit is the shy

person of the Trinity. And the Spirit is not shy

because he's he's timid. He's shy because his name

appears less in Scripture than the Father and the Son.

And he he's shy because his work is, is not as apparent of that

of Jesus Christ. It's internal and it's

transformative. And so the Spirit he's called

shy because his work is not to glorify himself.

When you look at the Spirit, all of a sudden the Spirit's

pointing your attention toward Christ and you look at Christ

and all of a sudden Christ is pointing your attention toward

the Father. And so it, it's hard to pinpoint

scriptures about the Spirit because all of a sudden you're,

you're looking at the Son. It's just how did, how did I get

here? That's his job is to glorify the

Son. John 1613 When the Spirit of

truth comes, he will guide you into all, all truth.

For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he

hears, he will speak. Listen, He will glorify me, for

He will take what is mine and declare it to you.

John 1526 Jesus says, when the Helper comes, whom I will send

to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds

from the Father, He will bear witness about me.

The Spirit does not bear witness to Himself.

The Spirit glorifies Christ. So the Spirit delights to focus

on the Son, and in the same way we see that the Son delights to

point the glory to God the Father.

John 718 The one who speaks of his own authority seeks his own

glory, But the one who seeks the glory of him who sent Him is

true. Jesus sought the glory of the

one who sent Him. John 850 says it plainly.

I do not seek my own glory. There is One who seeks it and He

is the Judge. And finally in the high priestly

prayer, he says, I glorified you on earth, have accomplished the

work that you gave me to do. So when you attempt to focus on

God the Spirit is to focus on God the Son.

Any attempt to focus on God the Son is to focus on God the

Father who sent him. And if you remember in the New

Testament some 200 times, it talks about our being found in

Christ and in the greatest concentration of this, in

Christ, in Jesus, in the beloved, the greatest

concentration of those come right here in Ephesians 1.

And I want to remind you the words of Carl Bart, when even as

he is, he is central here. Bart says even Christ's

centrality is meant to point to and not away from the centrality

of the triune God. And so we're going to glorify

the Spirit this morning. And in so doing, we will glorify

the Son and the Father who sent him.

And as you look down to these verses, 11 to 14, I counted 7

works of God the Holy Spirit in these 5 verses.

And so taken together, these seven works of the Holy Spirit

represent the application of redemption to your soul, the

application of redemption to the church.

And we're going to go through them one by one.

But those seven works are the Spirit, places you in Christ.

That's the first work. The Spirit unites all things in

Christ #3 the Spirit works through the Word, through the

gospel, and through faith #4 the Spirit seals believers #5 the

Spirit guarantees your inheritance.

Number six, the Spirit fulfills prophecy, and #7 the Spirit

glorifies Jesus Christ. So we'll begin right here at the

top. The Spirit places you in Christ.

I'm going to read verses 11 to 12 again so you can see it in

this context. It says in Him we have obtained

an inheritance, having been predestined according to the

purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel

of His will. Says that in Christ we have

received every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

And so this, all of these spiritual blessings, all of

these blessings that are given by the Holy Spirit are found in

Christ. Everything in this section is

bound up in Christ. And so union with, union with

Jesus, the beginning of our salvation did not occur when

Jesus went to the cross and died for your sins.

It didn't occur when he raised from the dead.

It didn't occur when he was ascended up into glory.

Your being united with Christ happened through the work of the

Holy Spirit, who then applied that work of redemption to you.

Jesus accomplished redemption. The Spirit has to apply it.

And so he says that in verse 13, that happens when you hear the

word of truth, when you hear the gospel, and when you believe

He's going to work in and through those things.

And after you believe in, because you believe the Spirit

applies the work of Jesus Christ to your soul.

Do you get it? This is the order.

This is how it happens, and this is the plan of God from all

eternity. This is the wise plan that was

part of the foreknowledge that was given in all wisdom and all

insight that God would have this plan, that the Spirit would

apply it. And you see that He accomplishes

it through your faith and belief. 200 times you hear these

words in Christ, in the Lord, in Christ Jesus, in Him, in the

beloved, which means that union with Jesus Christ is essential

to your faith. Without union with Christ, there

is no salvation. It's essential to your faith.

You are dead in your trespasses and sins while you remain

outside of Him. And it's by the work of the Holy

Spirit alone that you are united with your Savior, that His

righteousness is applied to you. And so all of the doctrines

we've seen so far in Ephesians, one, we've seen election and

redemption and justification and adoption and sanctification and

glorification. There's a reason you keep going

through. It's in Him.

It's in Him and in him. All of these doctrines run like

a thread. They all find their genesis or

the thread being bound up in Jesus Christ.

It all happens in Him. First Corinthians 617 to 20

illustrate this wonderfully. Or do you not know that your

body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God,

and you are not your own, for you were what?

But with a price, Therefore glorify God.

The Spirit unites you to Christ. And in that section.

This is the context of the words Paul says and verse 17 But he

who is joined to the Lord becomes 1 Spirit with him.

Your salvation is united. You are united in Christ.

And you can ask, how can I be sure that I'm saved?

How do I know that I'm saved? The answer is that God has given

you his Holy Spirit who dwells in you, who unites you to Jesus

so that you are found in him. And so when these verses, Paul

again remind you, this is God's sovereign plan and purpose.

And you see it in these two prepositional phrases.

In verse 11, he's underlining the thoughtful and deliberate

nature of God the Father and your salvation.

He says first it's according to the purpose of him and then

second, it's according to the counsel of his will.

He's been heaping up this, the sovereign language throughout

this passage. He's used 3 words to to stress

divine sovereignty. It says it's his purpose, it's

his counsel and it's his will. And you, you can't divide those

things. You can try and dig into them

and find shades of meaning in them, but there there's no

shades of meaning. It's it's Paul overwhelming you

with synonyms so that you get a sense of his sovereignty over

your life and over your salvation.

That's what these these words are doing.

It's his purpose. It's his work.

It's his counsel. It's his will.

He's sovereign. It's his plan at his initiative,

his power, his forethought, his design, his execution, and you

move on. And it says it's all according

to the working of his grace. Working is literally the word

inner ghetto, energetic. It's it's his power that is

accomplishing this work. It's his power that puts this

plan into effect. And we remember in verse 8, it's

not only with power, it's all power now, but it was with all

wisdom and all insight, power and wisdom.

And you look at the created order.

You can tonight when the sky goes dark, you can get out of

telescope and you can look out at this created order and you

can see something of the power and the the majesty and the

bigness of God. And then you can get out your

microscope the next morning and you can see something of the

wisdom of God because it's all there and apparent for you.

He's showing you this and you can look through all of it.

And he says here that he's uniting all things under Jesus

Christ, the work of the Spirit. He says things in heaven and

things on earth, they will all be brought in and made to reign

under the one head of Jesus. It says here he's building his

church from eternity past to eternity future, that we might

be his people and he might be our God.

And to remind you of this truth, he says it again.

He says this phrase again that we were predestined making it.

It's at the beginning, it's at the end.

It kind of makes it a refrain of this passage.

It begins and ends our section. And as you go into verse 11, I

want to make a note too that scholars argue here over this

word inheritance, and they say, do we have our inheritance in

Christ or are we the inheritance for Christ?

And I want to say that regardless whether you're the

inheritance or we've obtained an inheritance, Paul is going to

stress in Ephesians that you are a people after God's own

possession. It's one of his main focal

points. And your secure place in God is

intentional. And it required the Holy Spirit

uniting you into Christ so that you can be found in him.

That's his first great work. And moving to the second one,

the Spirit unites not only you, but all things in Jesus Christ.

Look at verse 12 into verse 13 he says verse 12 so that we who

were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of him

glory might be to the praise of his glory.

We who were the first to hope in Christ and then in 13 he says

and and in him you also and so he's making a distinction here.

You got to choose as he is he making a distinction between the

first to hope in Christ literally just being like some

people believed first and now some people are believing

second. You also, or is it we who were

the first are the Jews and you also are the Gentiles.

I think he's getting at that. And whether he is or isn't, he's

going to say this in chapter 3. This mystery is that the

Gentiles are fellow heirs, member of the same body,

partakers of the same promise in Jesus Christ through the gospel.

So you've already seen it illustrated at Pentecost where

he's taken the two unique bodies who are hostile to one another.

He's going to say the Gentiles who could not even approach the

throne of grace and he's saying I've taken those two and I've

united them under one head. They are now found in Christ in

submission to him. He's saying it's not just it's

all things things in heaven and things on earth and here's your

premier illustration. The Jews and the Gentiles, 2

distinct groups of people have been found in him.

And you see this when God poured out his Holy Spirit and

established his church, he pours out his spirit on the Jews and

3000 believe in the spirit comes on them and there's the same

spirit and there's the the tongues and there's the sign.

And then he goes to the Samaritans and trying to show

that it's one church united under Jesus Christ.

They received the same spirit and they know they have the same

spirit because it's the same sign, the same tongues.

And then you come to the Gentiles and here it is.

It's the same spirit. It's the same sign.

And so when the Spirit unites you to Christ, he's

simultaneously uniting you to the church, which is why anybody

that doesn't love the church doesn't love the Father.

You can't say I believe in God, but I don't believe in organized

religion. When you are given a new

orientation toward God, you're given a new orientation toward

His church. We have fellowship with Him and

we have fellowship with one another.

Ezekiel 11/19 prophesied. And I will give them all one

heart, and a new spirit I will put within them, and they shall

be my people, and I will be their God.

That's the only distinction. Now, those who are God's people

and those who aren't, we have been united under our head.

You become God oriented and you become church oriented.

And this unity is the very thing that Jesus prayed for.

We said last week that he's our priest and part of the the work

that Jesus accomplished as a priest was our atonement.

And as he's going to make atonement, he's praying.

This is all under his office as a priest, and as he was praying

to God the Father the night before or the night he was

betrayed, he says this. I asked for all those who

believe in me through their word, that they may all be one,

just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may

be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me

the glory that you have given me.

I have given to them that they may be 1 even as we are one, I

in them and you and me, that they may become perfectly 1, so

that the world may know you sent me and loved them even as you

loved me. So Jesus is praying that we

might be 1 even as the Trinity is 1.

Even his Father, Son, and Spirit are one.

That's the unity that we are to embody as a church.

And that prayer of Jesus Christ is accomplished by the work of

the Holy Spirit who unites all things in him.

The third work of the Holy Spirit as he says that the

Spirit works through the word and through the gospel and

through faith. And here's where Paul presents 2

truths in tension and the the tension of these two truths kind

of become a hallmark of his letters.

And those two truths are God's sovereign will for the salvation

of his church and the individual believers responsibility to

respond to the gospel in faith, God's sovereignty in man's

responsibility. And there's no need to reconcile

these verses. As Spurgeon famously said, how

do you He was asked, how do you reconcile these two truths to

each other? And he responded, I wouldn't

try. I never reconcile friends.

There's no contradiction, there's no tension between God's

election and mankind's response and faith.

Ji Packer wrote a book on it, Evangelism and the Sovereignty

of God. He says they're not enemies,

they're not uneasy neighbors. They're not in an endless state

of Cold War with each other. They're friends and they work

together. And you see it in verse 13 and

all of this language of sovereignty and the divine

initiative of God. And it says right here, read it

with me in him. You also, when you heard the

word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in

him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

And there's a word that we use. It's not a contradiction.

It's not a paradox. There's a word we use when

there's two truths that that the Bible affirms are both true and

our there's limits to our human understanding that we can't see

how they fit together. We know that they're true.

We confess them as true. Again, not a paradox.

We call it an antenna, me an an enemy.

And the main subject of this passage, going all the way up to

the main verb is God's sovereign choice of the church in eternity

past. And we see that again, that the

initiative of Jesus Christ as he comes and redeems his church,

the initiative of the Spirit as he applies that.

But then Paul presents 2 human elements that are necessary for

salvation, and the first one is the proclamation of the gospel.

You have to hear the gospel, and the second human element that is

absolutely essential is your belief in that gospel.

You have to hear and you have to believe.

And so there is human responsibility that is

compatible with divine sovereignty.

And the first human responsibility is to preach the

Word to every tribe, tongue and nation.

It's the responsibility of all of us and us collectively.

This is God's divine Commission. He says go there for and on the

basis of God's divine sovereignty and foreknowledge,

preach election to all those who are elect.

That's what he says. Oh no, that's not at all what he

said. Go therefore, and make disciples

of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father

and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all

that I've commanded you. And lo, I'm with you always,

even to the ends of the age. He's saying we have a

responsibility to preach the gospel, and that gospel is never

encumbered with the language of election.

We never proclaim election in our to say whoever is so

predestined. No, it's not restricted.

It does not restrict the free offer of the gospel, Whosoever

will believe in Jesus Christ. And then there's the other human

responsibility, not just to proclaim it, but to respond to

it and to trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.

You hear Paul's theology in Romans 10.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe

in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be

saved. It's enough to believe in your

heart and to confess with your mouth that he is Lord.

They have to hear, which is why Paul says in the same context,

How will they hear him and whom they have not believed, how they

call on him and who they have not believed?

How are they to believe in Him and whom they never heard?

How are they to hear without preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is

written? How beautiful are the feet of

those who preach the good news. Verse 13 For everyone who calls

on the name of the Lord will be saved, and this is your

opportunity. The salvation is here.

If you believe in Jesus Christ, you have to trust in all of

these tenets of the gospel that He is the eternal law.

Goss. He is the Son of God.

He took on flesh. He was born of a virgin.

He lived a perfect life that you could never live.

You sinned and fell short of the glory of God.

And by his work of redemption at the cross, he accomplished

perfect righteousness. And here's the beauty.

If you trust that that work is enough for your salvation, the

Holy Spirit, according to the plan and foreknowledge of God

the Father, will apply Christ's work of redemption to your

heart, and you will confess that Jesus is Lord and you will be

saved. And you can do that now.

If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ now, you will be saved.

And so divine election and human belief are necessary for your

salvation. We say from God's perspective,

the very actions of hearing and believing are part of his

sovereign plan. We say that he ordained the

means or the end, which is salvation, and he ordained the

means, which is belief and trust.

And from our perspective, the gospel has to be preached and it

has to be heard and it has to be believed and men are responsible

for their response, which you can sum it up this way.

If if a man goes to heaven, we say all glory be to God.

And if a man goes to hell, we say he is responsible for his

unbelief. And those two are not intention.

And so God's Holy Spirit works through the preaching of the

gospel, through belief, through trust, and through faith.

And there's actually, you got to make a decision grammatically

here. And you'll see it really is no

decision to how you're sealed. It's either because you heard

and believed in this prepositional phrase, or it's

after you heard and believed and the commentators are all in

agreement. The answer's yes, because you

heard and believed, and after you heard and believed, you were

sealed with God's Holy Spirit, who was the guarantee of your

inheritance to the praise of His glory, which leads you into the

most important work of God's Holy Spirit.

This is the work that's emphasized.

This is the main verb of the section as you go into the 4th

work of the Holy Spirit. As emphasized in this passage,

the Holy Spirit seals believers and you can read verse 13 again.

Again, this is what's emphatic in him.

You also, when you heard the word of truth or after you heard

the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in

him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

So here's the works. God the Father adopts you, that

that's his emphasis. The Spirit or the Son redeems

you. That's the main metaphor of the

Son here. And then the Holy Spirit seals

you and I want to show you that like adoption there, there's

several things that get communicated in that metaphor.

And there's several things that are communicated and, and this

metaphor of being sealed, these three things are it communicates

ownership, genuineness or authenticity and security.

And there's a commentator named folks who kind of wraps all this

up, ownership, authenticity, security.

He says in this brief description of what it means to

be sealed. He says, quote, in the ancient

world, the seal was the personal sign of the owner or the sender

of something important. And thus, as in a letter, it

distinguished what was true from that which was spurious.

It was also the guarantee that the things sealed had been

carried intact. So the king or the dignitary

would take his, his ring or his stamp and he would seal the

letter saying, now you know this is from me.

It's that it, it's saying that this belongs to me.

I am the owner. It's the mark you, you know that

it's, it's secure because it's sealed.

And so first, it's a mark of ownership.

And you can use this metaphor. The spirit seals you like unto

how we, we brand cattle. It's a mark of ownership.

I bought this one. This one belongs to me.

Or if you don't like that metaphor, Richard Cokin says the

Holy Spirit is the birthmark of every believer.

When you're born again, you receive a birthmark, and that

birthmark is the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians 619 to 20 says

you are not your own. You were bought at a price.

And so Jesus is saying this one is mine, this one belongs to me.

It's first a mark of ownership, and then it's a mark of

authenticity. Who gets the Holy Spirit of God

except those who have a genuine faith?

If you have a spurious faith, if you have a, if you're a cultural

Christian, a civic Christian, then you do not receive the Holy

Spirit. There is no transforming of your

life because you lack the power. You you try and manifest

outwardly what there is no power internally to manifest.

The spirit marks genuine faith. It's the final proof to the

individual and it's the final proof to others that you have

this internal and transformative force which works its way, its

way out. And then it actually becomes

external assurance because you are not who you were or who you

once were. It becomes assurance to you and

it moves into this Third Point. This this metaphor is security

and you go to the book of Romans in chapter 8, the Holy Spirit's

chapter. It's a beautiful it multiplies

metaphors for what it means to have this Holy Spirit.

He's like you're a live in contractor.

It says it's like a a dead man coming to life is what it's like

when you receive the Holy Spirit of God.

It's like you were dead and you're alive.

He says it's like you were a slave and now you're a son.

Some fundamental legal changes happen, some ontological change

has happened, and you are no longer as you were.

And with adoption, this metaphor provides the assurance that you

belong now and forever to God. And we talk all the time.

I hear you guys talk all the time about the Westminster

Shorter Catechism question #1 and you say that all the time.

What is the chief end of man? But I, I, I will buy a book To

anyone who could tell me the Heidelberg Catechism question

number one, What is your only comfort in life and death?

My only comfort in life and in death is that I belong.

I am not my own, but I belong in body and soul and in life and in

death to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.

Heido Catechism, Hebrews 912. He bought you, He secured for

you an eternal redemption. He snatched you from the fire.

Your name is written on his hand.

Your name is written in the Lamb's book of life.

Your legal status has changed. He sealed you with His promised

Holy Spirit. He says He will never leave you.

He will never forsake you. You're His.

He'll bring to completion what He began.

And how can you be sure? Because God has given you as His

first fruits, His Holy Spirit. And it's based on the work of

that Holy Spirit, not on yours, that He will bring it to

completion. We can trust in the work of the

Holy Spirit. He has sealed you and the

element of security continues into the 5th work.

It brings us into the 5th work, which is that the spirit

guarantees our inheritance. This is kind of the positive

counterpoint counterpart to the the last work.

You will receive your full inheritance because it says here

that he is your down payment. The guarantee.

He's the guarantee of your inheritance until you require

possession of it. And to say it another way again,

he is your firstfruits. He's given you this firstfruits

and the rest is to come. It's not just then, but it's

now. There's much more coming.

And this is where redemption and forgiveness.

It's already been talked about. This is where it it ends up

eternal redemption, this future inheritance, our full

inheritance in glory, our final redemption.

And you come to the to this passage.

Guarantee is the Greek word Arabon, which means literally

earnest money or caution money. And anybody who's ever made a

large purchase, or if you've ever bought a home and you've

had to put a massive earnest money or down payment on a, on a

home, then you understand this metaphor.

This is literally what he's saying.

You're making a promise to buy this house and you're saying,

I'm so committed to buying this house that I'm going to give you

this money as a promise and an assurance that I'm going to

continue and buy it. And so in Oklahoma, this is as

little as 1% or as much as 5%. You're saying with this money,

I'm making this promise. I'm swearing this to you, and

God's showing you how serious he is, His earnest money to you as

he says, I'm giving you myself, I'm giving you my Holy Spirit.

This at its core, at its most basic expression, is a promise.

And this image of a deposit also reminds you that this is not all

yet future. You have his Spirit now.

He's transforming you now. It's the first fruits you have

now the Spirit, and there's more to come.

So you're not yet with Jesus, but you will be.

And you know, because He's given you this promise that you may

know that His blessings are coming.

The 6th work, I'm going to keep moving.

The 6th work is easy to overlook.

He is fulfilling prophecy. The Spirit fulfills prophecy.

Look at verse 13. There's this little name for the

Holy Spirit. It says that He is the promised

Holy Spirit. Interesting title.

He's the promised Holy Spirit and you go back.

There are so many. It could be a sermon in itself

of all of the prophecies about the Spirit who's coming.

I want to highlight three Numbers 1129.

Moses cries out, exclaims, would that all the Lord's people were

prophets, would the Lord put his Spirit in all of them?

And we say, church, you've lived to see the day it's here.

It's now Joel 228 to 29. It prophesied about the day the

Holy Spirit would be poured out on all flesh.

And it shall come to pass after that I will pour my spirit on

all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophecy and

your old men shall dream dreams in those days I will pour out my

spirit. Ezekiel chapter 36, I will give

Ezekiel 36 · chapter mention

you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I

will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give

you a heart of flesh. I will put My spirit within you

and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey

My rules. The Holy Spirit's transforming

presence actually does. He's given you a heart of flesh

and He causes you to walk in the statutes of God the Father.

And so each of these prophecies, and there and there are many

more, are telling you in advance that this was God's will and

plan, this was his design, that the Spirit would give you a new

heart, that he would cause you to delight in the commandments

of God. The world looks at the

commandments of God and says they're so restricting, they're

so limiting, they're fun killing.

And to us, the church, we say we delight to do these

commandments, we love it. That's the work of the Spirit.

It says by that riches you have, by his work, you have a new

heart, you have a new nature, you're delight in Him.

And yet we have to confess. Yet not I, but through Christ

and me. Just like Michael Farran's song,

with every breath I long to follow Jesus.

For he said He will bring me home, and day by day I know He

will renew me until I stand with joy before the throne.

The work of a Spirit. To this I hold my hope is only

Jesus. All the glory evermore to Him.

When the race is complete, my lips shall repeat.

Yet not I, but through Christ and me.

And the final work of the Spirit in this the 7th is that the

Spirit glorifies Jesus Christ. And this long sentence ends with

the purpose of all of it. He uses it three times for the

Father of the Son and the Spirit, He says to the praise of

the glory of God the Father, to the praise of the glory of God

the Son, to the praise of the glory of God the Holy Spirit.

So this morning as we glorify and shine the spotlight on the

Spirit, we participate in his work of glorifying the Son and

his work of glorifying God the Father.

And so at the end of all of this, at the end of these 12

verses, the sentence begun in eternity, I hope you see more

clearly who you are. Not because we've studied man as

man, not because we've stood over the Scriptures, but because

we've submitted to the divine revelation, because you've

studied who God is. And I hope that because you've

got a sense of how big God is, that you now understand just a

little bit more who you are. And I, I can think of no greater

summary for these verses than these legendary words of a

commentator named Daryl Bock. I want to read his quote at

length to sum up this whole sentence.

He says quote, the theology of the unit is one of praise tied

to an awareness of all that God has done for believing sinners

from eternity past into the present and looking ahead to

consummation. These believers have received

from God everything they need for a fruitful spiritual life.

They can bless God for all He's done on their behalf because

they are rooted in His choice of them in eternity past, tied to

the work of Jesus Christ, and are living in a context of the

forgiveness of sins, redemption, and the provision of the Spirit

as a down payment and seal of what is to come.

We are part of a larger drama in which God is summing up all

things in Christ to the praise of the glory of His grace.

This awareness of and gratitude for what God has done is fuel

for the direction and stability of the Christian life.

When we realize how much God has done for us, the sense of

gratitude that emerges leads us to responsiveness for the

challenges of living the new life that we've received from

God. These divine acts He performs on

our behalf have a future destination that will lead us to

full redemption, and we can add to his quote to the praise of

his glory. So I want to end with this

Heidelberg question number one. What is your only comfort in

life and in death? I only read part of it.

My only comfort in life and death is that I am not my own,

but I've been bought and belong in body and spirit in heaven.

That I've been bought in body and spirit by my faithful

Saviour Jesus Christ. And He goes on because I belong

to Him, Christ. By His Holy Spirit He assures me

of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready

from now on to live for Him. So please pray with me, Lord,

You are our only comfort in life and death.

This is our comfort, that we belong to You.

You bought us and when you bought us, you branded us.

You gave us this birthmark at our regeneration when we're born

again. This one is mine, says the Lord,

we belong to you. And this is not a this is not a

slave as the world would see slave.

This is not chattel slavery. This is a a bondservant of love

that you've given us an awl in our ear and you've said I belong

to you and we say, Lord, what a great and benevolent Lord you

are to us. And the better metaphor that

you've given us is it doesn't in there.

You are our Father, and you love us.

You've adopted us. You've given us a home, You've

given us an inheritance. And we know that we have because

you've given us your Holy Spirit who's regenerating our hearts

and transforming us so that we have assurance and we know that

we believe, and we know that nothing can separate us from

your love. And you are our Lord.

You are a Lord who loves us, a Lord who's adopted us, who's

demonstrated that love Romans 55 to 8 by redeeming us.

And praise God this morning you are glorified and that you have

sent your Holy Spirit to keep us.

We put all of our faith and all of our assurance, not in our

works, but in His works that He's accomplishing in us even

now. It is to your glory that we now

sing Lord in Christ's name. Amen.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about Heritage

Church or if you'd like to respond to this sermon, visit

our website at www.heritageshawnee.org.