The Mystery Revealed (1Corinthians 2:10-26)

Like I said, we're in 1 Corinthians starting in chapter 2, and we're going to be reading verses 10 through 16.

I missed last Sunday because I wasn't feeling well.

This is really a part two of two weeks ago.

So we had kind of had a long lull in there.

But 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 10 through 16, if you're able, will you please stand for the reading of God's word?

1 Corinthians 2:10–16

Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

For who knows a person's thoughts except his spirit within him?

In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Now we have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God.

We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.

But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God's Spirit, because it is foolishness to him.

He's not able to understand it since it is evalu since it is evaluated spiritually.

The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything, and yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone.

For who has known the Lord's mind that he may instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you so much for these verses.

And even though it's not that many here this morning, there is so much in here that I know you have for us.

So, Lord, I pray that you would bring clarity to each one of us by your spirit, that you would be the teacher, the revealer of all things to us here this morning, and that I would simply be your mouthpiece.

I pray that you'd help me to rightly divide your word and stay out of the way.

May your spirit do the work here this morning, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So today we are going to be talking a lot about the Holy Spirit.

And for some, you know, I think that automatically can bring a sense of, oh boy, I hope this doesn't get weird, right?

And the reason is I think that so oftentimes we kind of get those mixed emotions about talking about the Holy Spirit is because I think there's been so many abuses of the name of the Holy Spirit.

And let me explain.

What I mean by that is things that have been done in the name of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit had nothing to do with whatever was done.

You know, even in this letter, Paul will address issues of the Holy Spirit multiple times, just in 1 Corinthians alone.

Today he's gonna address how the Holy Spirit is the revealer of truth.

Next week in chapter 3, verse 16, and then again in 1 Corinthians 6, 19, we'll see Paul talking about the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us and how we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, how the we're the place where the Holy Spirit dwells.

And then in chapter 12, he's gonna talk about how the Holy Spirit helps the body of Christ function together as one.

And then in chapter 14, we'll see the Holy Spirit as the author of peace and how the gifts of the Holy Spirit need to be used decently and in order in the context of a service like this.

And in all of those cases, Paul writes to the 1 Corinthians because the church in Corinth was not doing these things well.

And I'm sure if you've been following Jesus for any amount of time, you've been exposed to things being done in the name of the Holy Spirit when you know that it obviously was not the Holy Spirit's doing.

So I thought it would be good for us to start this morning kind of with an overview of the Holy Spirit so that we can all start from that same foundation and understanding of who the Holy Spirit is, and hopefully remove any uneasiness that we have about talking about the Holy Spirit or his role within the Trinity.

So let's start there.

The Holy Spirit is God.

He's not an it, he is a he.

One God, three persons, for all of eternity, past and future.

Jesus wasn't created 2,000 years ago when he came to us on earth.

Um, and the Holy Spirit wasn't created at Pentecost when he came down to indwell the people 50 days after Jesus' resurrection.

Jesus was there from the beginning.

We see that he's in the creation story.

We see it in Genesis 1, we see it in John 1 as well.

And the Holy Spirit was not created, like I said, at Pentecost.

He was there at the beginning.

Genesis 1:1 tells us, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

The Holy Spirit was an active part of creation as well.

One God, three persons, all eternity, past and future.

Now, from the time of creation through the whole Old Testament until after Jesus' ascension, the Holy Spirit was active in the lives of men and women in the same role that he is today.

But what has changed since the Old Testament is the access that we now have to the Holy Spirit that those in the Old Testament never had.

And we see examples throughout the Old Testament where the Holy Spirit would come upon, that's usually the phrase that we'll see, they would come upon someone for a moment or a time or a season to do some great work that the Lord had set before them.

You know, we see this with Saul, we see it with David and Joshua, with some of the prophets, and even some of the artisans that built the tabernacle that we see in Exodus.

The Holy Spirit came upon them for that specific work.

But we don't see the Holy Spirit indwelling anyone permanently until Jesus' baptism.

And then we don't see it for a long time, and then we see it again at Pentecost.

But in Jesus' ministry, he tells his disciples ahead of time in John 14, 16, what is to come.

He tells them what to expect.

And I want to read you John 14, 16, here this morning.

So this is Jesus speaking to his disciples.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor, that's the Holy Spirit, to be with you forever.

He is the Spirit of truth.

The world is unable to receive him because it doesn't see him or know him.

But you do know him because he remains with you, and, and here's the key, will be in you.

And then Jesus tells his disciples again in Acts 1 8, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

You know, we talked a lot about this when we went through the Gospel of Mark together as a church.

How the disciples did some really not smart things in the Gospels that we see.

They had some really not smart arguments with each other.

We saw a lot of infighting with them.

And we saw them even try to counsel Jesus in his decision making.

But then in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit comes upon them and indwells them during what, as we mentioned, is called Pentecost.

And he came to dwell in them permanently.

And these once dense disciples, though not perfect, became these amazingly bold and wise leaders that God uses to lay the foundation of the church that we know today.

And the only difference was they now had this permanent access through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit living in and through them.

And in Acts 17, the disciples were accused of turning the world upside down.

It was a complete transformation from the men that we see in the Gospels to the men that we see in Acts that were indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

And that's what the indwelling of the Holy Spirit can do in every single one of us as well.

Now, the last thing I want to talk about before we jump into the text, you know, and this being regarding the Holy Spirit, is I want to give us a quick list that we see of the titles of the Holy Spirit in Scripture.

And it's not exhaustive, but this is just kind of an example.

But I think it'll give us a better understanding of his role within the Trinity and His role as he dwells within us.

One of the titles that we see is counselor, advocate, seal, as in of our salvation, the seal of our salvation, the indweller, the convictor of sin, an intercessor, you know, that he knows how to pray for us when we don't.

We see the title guide.

We see Spirit of Truth, which we're actually going to be talking about quite a bit today.

Which goes along with his role as teacher.

You know, he imparts knowledge.

And he is a revealer of God, a revealer of the mysteries of God to us.

So that's just kind of a brief survey of who the Holy Spirit is in a nutshell.

So hopefully that kind of gives us a launching point as we jump into these scriptures here this morning.

But one last thing before we jump in, and I mentioned this at the beginning.

This is really a part two of the message that was given two weeks ago.

And I want to make sure that we're able to keep this all in the context of the first half of this chapter.

So to recap, two weeks ago, we talked about the mystery of God and how that is referring to his plan of salvation for mankind since before the foundations of the world.

And how this mystery is foolishness to the world, and how worldly wisdom could never understand God's plan for salvation for us.

How natural man, how humans living in their flesh could never comprehend this.

And then the other thing that I want to talk about was that we talked about two weeks ago was the power of the gospel and how it is the power of God to salvation.

How Paul didn't come to convince and persuade the Corinthians to follow Jesus through a slick presentation and a bulletproof argument.

But he decided that he'd simply preach Jesus Christ and him crucified and allow the power of God to do the rest.

And we finished part one of that message in verse 9.

And I want to start there to kind of get a running start, and then we'll jump into verse 10.

So verse 9 says, What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived, God has prepared these things for those who love him.

So speaking of how we cannot understand God with earthly human wisdom.

And Paul picks up in verse 10 telling us how God does reveal those things to us.

So jump into verse 10 with me.

Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit.

Since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

God has revealed these things to us by his spirit.

Remember, one of the titles that we talked about is Revealer, showing us things we could never understand or learn on our own through the wisdom of man.

You know, as we went through the book of Mark, going back to that one more time, we talked a lot about what the wisdom of man thought the Messiah should be.

What the wisdom of man thought the Messiah should be doing.

They wanted Jesus' second coming.

They didn't want his first coming.

Their earthly wisdom thought Jesus should show up on a white horse and destroy everyone that didn't think like them or have the same heritage as they did.

They weren't expecting a suffering servant that would be crucified on a cross.

Their earthly wisdom had different plans than Jesus did, different plans than God did.

And even Jesus' disciples were like that.

They had all of these plans of what Jesus should be doing because their earthly wisdom could not comprehend the plan for salvation that God had.

This was a mystery to everyone that the Holy Spirit then had to reveal to the disciples and to everybody else that came to faith after the fact, after Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection.

Now, the second half of verse 10, at first glance it might seem a bit confusing because it makes it sound like the Holy Spirit is searching out God the Father.

As if the Holy Spirit doesn't know everything about God the Father, even though they're one.

But if we keep this all in context of what is being talked about, this is referring to the Holy Spirit inside of us, helping us, helping our spirit to explore and understand even the depths of God.

Think about that for a second.

We can know those things.

If we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us those things that are only known in the depths of God.

Which, verse 11, goes into a bit deeper.

Look at that with me.

For who knows a person's thoughts except his spirit within him?

So that's a lowercase spirit.

We need to note that because that's referring to our spirit within us.

This is not referring to the Holy Spirit.

This is referring to our spirit.

And who knows what we are thinking better than us, right?

I want to play a little game here this morning as an example.

Let's play would you rather, okay?

Would you rather, and this is kind of appropriate because I know a lot of our congregation is sick right now, would you rather get the worst flu of your life for one week?

I mean, you know, the chills, the shakes, the aches, the congestion, all of that kind of stuff, for seven days straight?

Or would you rather have all of your thoughts spoken out loud for one week?

You can't hide, you can't crawl in a hole, you can't avoid people, you have to go about your everyday life.

Why is that such a hard decision?

Sickness has never looked so good, has it?

It's because who knows better what we are thinking than us?

We're the only person that knows what we're thinking.

And apparently, I think we'd like to keep it that way, right?

And people can only know what we're thinking if we tell them what we're thinking, right?

Look at the second half of verse 11.

In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

We cannot know the mind of God unless he tells us what he's thinking, unless he tells us what he's desiring.

And that is what the Holy Spirit is doing inside of us right now.

Revealing those mysteries, telling us what he desires, helping us understand things that we cannot understand without him.

Revealing those mysteries to us.

That's what makes the access that we have now, that nobody had prior to Pentecost, so incredible.

Since creation, all the way through to the 50 days after Jesus' resurrection, no single person has the access like we have now.

Think about that.

And think about the difference that that made in the lives of the disciples.

We actually got to see a case study in the lives of the disciples of what things were like before the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and what things were like after the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

We're so blessed because we have had the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us since the day that we gave our lives to Jesus Christ.

We've never known what it was like to live for God without this amazing gift of the Holy Spirit in our life.

But we have God dwelling in us, tabernacling in us, revealing the mysteries of God to us constantly and guiding us constantly.

And we need to come to a place in our walk, individually, in our walk, where we decide that we're going to listen to that voice no matter what.

Having a ready yes on our lips, no matter what he asks us to do, no matter what he reveals to us.

Because we'd be absolute fools not to.

To have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, revealing these amazing things to us, and to say, no, you know, I think I know better.

But that's what we do when we refuse to listen to that voice that is inside of us.

And I think we need to remember who Paul's talking to here.

He's talking to a group of believers that are still living according to their flesh.

They are believers, but they're still living according to their flesh.

If their flesh desires it, from everything we can see in this book, they're not denying themselves whatever their flesh is desiring.

Remember when we talked about the first Sunday that we jumped into 1 Corinthians and we're talking about the city and the demographics and kind of what was going on within that city at that time.

We talked about how they were known for drunkenness.

They were known for prostitution, and they were known for wealth.

They weren't used to saying no to the desires of their flesh.

If they wanted it, they did it.

And they usually probably had enough money to satisfy whatever desire that was.

And they're still struggling with that voice of their flesh being louder than the voice of the Holy Spirit in their life.

And this is what Paul is addressing here.

So Paul's reminding them.

He's saying the Spirit of God is inside of you and wants to reveal things to you and counsel you in your decisions and convict you of your sin.

Corinthians, just please listen.

You have this amazing gift that was freely given to you inside of you.

You need to learn to listen and obey that voice.

Verse 12.

Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God.

The Spirit that comes from God is God given to us so that we may understand.

Given to us so that we may take advantage of the amazing benefit of having God living inside of us, tabernacling inside of us.

So I just see Paul saying, Corinthians.

Do you get it?

This free gift?

Take advantage of this free gift that God has given you.

And I think God wants to say the same thing to us take advantage of that amazing free gift that God that I have given you, you know, from God's perspective.

Take advantage of that.

I think because We have had it since the day of our salvation, I think oftentimes we neglect it or forget about it or don't appreciate what God has given us.

Verse 13.

We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.

He simply points out here that the Holy Spirit doesn't reveal spiritual things to everyone.

But as we saw in verse 9 two weeks ago, he reveals spiritual things to those who love him.

To spiritual people.

We have the ability to see our need for Jesus before we surrender to him.

We have the ability to see our need for salvation before we surrender to him.

But we don't start to understand the mysteries of God, the mystery of salvation until the Holy Spirit is dwelling inside of us.

Which is at the moment that we surrender our life to Jesus.

Then is when we start to understand those spiritual things that Paul's talking about here.

It's our spiritual eyes, so to speak, are now open for the first time when we accept that gift of Jesus Christ.

I mean, I don't know about you, but for me, I wasn't too concerned about predestination and free will before I came to Christ.

I wasn't contemplating God's plan for salvation from the foundations of the earth before I came to Christ.

I wasn't concerned about the process of sanctification, you know, before I came to Christ.

Those just weren't things that, like, ah, you know.

These are spiritual topics for spiritual people.

And it's the job of the Holy Spirit to reveal those spiritual things to us.

Verse 14.

But the person without the spirit, now your translation might say natural man, and what this means is the man given over to the flesh, living by the flesh.

So, but the person without the spirit does not receive what comes from God's Spirit because it is foolishness to him.

He is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.

You know, we actually can't expect someone to understand things that we understand spiritually if they're not filled with the Holy Spirit.

These people are living by their senses.

You know, all they know and all that they can evaluate are things that they can experience through their senses, but through what they can see, taste, smell, touch, and hear.

That's all they have to evaluate everything.

But the Holy Spirit gives the spiritual man, you know, the follower of Christ, so much more to evaluate everything with.

The Holy Spirit, God inside of us, making those evaluations for us.

And this doesn't mean that we look down on those that don't have the Holy Spirit.

That's not what's going on here.

It just means we need to keep bringing those people back to the gospel.

Because I don't know about you, but I've personally never led somebody to Christ through an argument.

I know it can happen, but I've never personally experienced that.

Because it's through the gospel, it's through the power of God that somebody comes to salvation.

Because we can't expect people to understand the thoughts of God, as it says in verse 11 here, except by the Spirit of God.

And if he's not in you, there's no way to understand those things.

You know, this makes me think of the Ethiopian eunuch.

You might remember that story in Acts 8, where God tells this guy, Philip, to go to the certain place.

It's an amazing story if you're not familiar with it.

Go read Acts 8 right after we're done here.

But he tells Philip to go to the certain place, and he comes across this chariot, and there's this Ethiopian eunuch that's riding in this chariot.

And he was reading from Isaiah 53, a passage that was directly prophesying about Jesus.

And I want to read you what the Ethiopian eunuch was reading.

He was reading, and think of this, if you have no concept of Jesus or salvation, he was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before its cheerer, so he does not open his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him.

Who will describe his generation?

For his life is taken from the earth.

And the eunuch, for obvious reasons, was not giving it.

Like, how does this have to do with God and salvation and that Jesus guy just learned about?

And it says that Philip asked him, you know, are you understanding this?

And he says, How can I, you know, understand unless somebody guides me?

And then it says Philip proceeded to tell him the good news, to tell him the gospel about Jesus, beginning with that scripture in Isaiah 54.

Then the guy accepts the good news, finally understands what Isaiah 53 was talking about.

He's like, What's keeping me from being baptized?

Let's just do it on the side of the road right now.

And the guy gets baptized right on the spot.

But the point is, he wasn't getting it before the gospel had penetrated his heart.

The gospel makes no sense to natural man until the power of God through the gospel affects their heart.

Verse 15.

The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything.

And yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone.

The idea here is that the person who has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is able to evaluate, is able to discern everything because the Spirit is inside of them.

You know, maybe you've experienced this.

You know, something happens, or maybe you hear something, and something inside of you says, something's off here.

You know, it's just like, I can't even, you know, put my finger on it.

I'm not sure what's wrong, but something is off.

Something doesn't feel right about this.

If you're accustomed to listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, nine out of ten times, that's his voice warning you and saying, uh-uh.

Other times, usually the pizza that you ate the night before or something like that.

I say that jokingly, but there are times we talk about this a lot in Romans where legalism and a misinformed conscience and stuff like that can affect that voice of warning sometimes.

But nine times out of ten, if you're accustomed to it, that's the voice of the Holy Spirit just saying, uh, you might want to pump the brakes on this a little bit, or whatever that might be.

You know, I actually had an experience uh with this.

This was years ago down in Oxnard, and I was the worship pastor, and this guy came in and he wanted to be a part of the worship band.

He was all gung-ho, he was saying all the right things and all that stuff.

There's just like this weird check in my spirit about this guy of just like something's off.

He's saying the right things, and you know, he's he's doing all the right things, but you know, something's off.

And then I had a couple other people from the worship team come in and like, there's something up with that guy.

You know, I can't put my finger on it, but there's there's something going on, something's not right.

And it wasn't just me, but the Holy Spirit was kind of prompting a group of us, and then come to find out, one of the people that was on the worship team, because he was coming to practices for uh a couple times before we we he was in the evaluation process actually.

Um, and somebody just ran into him in Costco while he was talking to somebody else and just, I guess, had a filthy mouth and was talking about extremely inappropriate things and stuff like that.

And the Lord allowed somebody on the team to come across him.

We confronted him on it, and he said the most vile things to us as he was stomping his way out the door.

But we had no way of knowing this, other than the Spirit was just like, hey, probably should pump the brakes, which we did, you know, thankfully.

But that's that's the voice of the Holy Spirit, just giving us those warnings and just letting us know, hey, you know, something's a little off.

And sometimes we won't even know for a while why that was.

But oftentimes God will reveal later on, and you're like, oh, that's why.

You know, that's why something was off in that.

But we have an ability to discern those things just like that because of the Spirit of God in us.

But verse 15 also tells us that no natural man, no one that does not have the Spirit, can evaluate or discern or judge anything regarding the spiritual man.

They don't have the insight of the Holy Spirit living in them.

If you're following Jesus, some of your relatives probably think you're a little, you're you know, right?

Maybe this just happened at Thanksgiving.

Or maybe your clo your co-workers or your classmates think you know you're a little bit in left field.

Because they don't get it.

They can't evaluate you.

So I want to encourage you, with all those people that might think you're a little crazy because of your faith in Jesus, just continue to give them Christ and Him crucified.

And then maybe someday, prayerfully, they'll get it and they'll understand it, and they'll come to that same knowledge through the Holy Spirit that you have today because of the Holy Spirit living inside of you.

Verse 16.

For who has known the Lord's mind that he may instruct him?

You know, the answer to this rhetorical question from Isaiah 40 is no one.

No person knows the mind of the Lord.

But the Spirit does want to reveal the mind of the Lord to us, to followers of Christ, little by little, as we continue to walk in our faith.

And then Paul ends this section, the end of verse 16 with, but we have the mind of Christ.

And I think that begs the question well, what is the mind of Christ exactly?

The answer to that question is Paul's been describing the mind of Christ this whole chapter in chapter 2.

So I want to just review a few things that we've learned.

The mind of Christ is not the wisdom of man, and it's not the wisdom of our flesh.

It is a mystery to those that don't love God.

The mind of Christ contains the wisdom of God.

No human heart has conceived the mind of Christ.

Only those that love God can have the mind of Christ.

The mind of Christ is revealed by God's Spirit in us and to us.

The mind of Christ is taught only to spiritual people, to those that love God.

The mind of Christ is foolishness to anybody that does not have the spirit dwelling inside of them.

And the mind of Christ can evaluate everything.

And Paul is saying, if you're walking by the Spirit, you have the mind of Christ.

And if you're not walking by the Spirit, there's no way that you can possibly have the mind of Christ or even begin to understand the mind of Christ.

So I want to end with this.

I want to talk a little bit about how we hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Because that is such a common question of like, well, how do I hear it?

How do I know it?

How do I know, you know, if it's my flesh or if it's the spirit or, you know, if it's something else or somebody else's voice in my life.

Well, I think we can start with every word of the Bible is the inspired word of God given by the Holy Spirit to each and every author that authored the 66 books that make up our Bible.

We're holding the words of the Holy Spirit in our hands right now.

Think about that.

You know, our first value as a church, and if you haven't read those, those are on our website, but the first value of our church is the word of God is the compass that directs everything that we do.

That's our number one value.

We can read God's word and know that we're hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit in every word.

This is one of the reasons that we encouraged everybody back in June, if you are, weren't already in some sort of a Bible reading program, to read through the Bible in a year with us.

So that you can know the word and you can know the voice of the Holy Spirit for yourself.

And as a side note, if you've fallen behind in your reading, which is very common, who cares?

Just keep reading.

Even if it takes you a year and a half or two years to read the Bible in a year, that's okay.

You're still getting the voice of the Holy Spirit imparted directly into your life.

Keep reading.

Don't get me discouraged if you fall behind.

I'm about a week behind myself, but who cares?

I'm gonna just keep going.

I want to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit daily in my life.

The point is, the voice of the Holy Spirit is available to us whenever we want to hear it.

If you're not hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit, open your Bible.

And if we're faithful to do that, the Holy Spirit will pull up the scriptures that we need.

He'll pull those up to memory right at the moment that we're gonna need them the most.

And it's gonna sound like, hey, remember that verse you just read this morning?

Or that verse you read last week, or whenever it might have been, or that verse you memorized when you were eight?

Now is the time to apply that directly to your life.

You know, I so strongly believe that for each one of us, one of the most important things we can do as a church is teach people to walk by the Spirit for themselves.

Where you're not depending on me or anyone else to make those decisions for you.

Now, I believe there's a wisdom in multiplitative counselors.

I'm not talking about getting advice from believers.

I'm talking about people wanting spiritual leaders or other people to think for them or discern for them or vote for them.

Spiritual leaders should be helping you learn how to see things through a biblical lens for yourself.

So that you can think with the mind of Christ on your own.

So that you can walk by the Spirit for yourself.

And the best place to start is in God's Word.

Because I'll let you in on a little secret.

I make a horrible Holy Spirit.

And you don't want me telling you what to do or what to think.

And I'll let you in on another secret.

You make a horrible Holy Spirit.

We need to learn to do things and to understand through the only Holy Spirit.

And we need to learn to walk by the Holy Spirit and have the mind of Christ for ourselves.

The truth is, it's easier for somebody else to tell us what to do.

It's like, oh yeah, well, it's kind of just easier.

I don't even have to worry about it.

It's easier to have somebody to tell us what's in the Bible, isn't it?

Throw on a podcast or just come to church on Sunday mornings or whatever it is.

It's easier for somebody else to listen to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and say, hey, you know, the Lord told me you need to do this.

And that's because it requires discipline to walk by the Spirit.

It means we're in God's word, listening to his voice for ourselves.

It means that we're in prayer, not just speaking, but also listening to the Lord.

It means that we're abiding in Christ.

We're depending upon him for everything.

It means that we're in fellowship with each other, so that the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us can be active, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit can be active in others to minister to us as well.

And all of those things take discipline.

I know it's easy to wake up on a Sunday morning and just be like, oh man, I'm tired.

But to be in fellowship, it takes discipline.

Or to open your Bible and read it for yourself.

To abide in Christ and depend upon him for everything and not anything under our own strength.

Those all take discipline.

You know, Paul brings all this together really well in a verse that kind of sums all of this up in Ephesians 3.8.

And I want to read it to you.

Ephesians 3.8 says, This grace was given to me, the least of all the saints, to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of Christ, and to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

This is so that God's multifaceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens.

This is according to his eternal purpose, accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

His eternal purpose accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You see how this all starts with Jesus?

The power of the gospel sets in and then is accepted.

And then the Spirit indwells us and begins his role of counseling and convicting us, which gets that process of sanctification going.

That just means becoming more like Jesus.

It gets that process going.

And he reveals the mystery of God's plan for salvation to us, which makes us appreciate God and Jesus even more, which makes us want to walk by the Spirit even closer, which makes us appreciate God's mystery of salvation even more, which then makes us want to become more like Jesus.

See how that cycle just keeps going?

But it all starts with Jesus.

It all begins with him and gets that whole thing going.

You know, as I was finishing up this sermon, and it's something I've been thinking about for a couple weeks now, you know, we're about a year and a half into having Sunday morning services.

And I can't say 100%, but I think almost 100%, every sermon that we've come, either through the Gospels or through Romans or through Corinthians now, has come down to one of three things.

It either comes down to surrender to God, abide in Christ, or walk by the Spirit.

And I can't think of one exception to it not coming into one of those things, or all three of those things, or two of those three things.

But I really think that's what it comes down to: surrendering to God, abiding in Christ, and walking by the Spirit.

And then we see that beautiful cycle taking place of how one leads to an appreciation of the other and a desire to be more like Jesus, just over and over and over again.

And that's really, I think, my encouragement to you this morning from these verses is surrender to God, abide in Christ, and walk by the Spirit.

And if you're here this morning and you've never surrendered to God, you've never asked Jesus to come into your life, you've never surrendered to him and asked him to be your Savior and to forgive you of all of your sins and to wash you and cleanse you.

I want to encourage you that this morning's that time to surrender that God loves you so much.

He wants to entwell you and live inside of you and be your guide for the rest of your life.

To wash away your sins and throw them as far away as the east is to the west.

So I want to encourage you to do that this morning by just simply telling him that.

It's not a special magical prayer to pray, but just telling him, I'm ready, Jesus.

If you do, please come tell me, tell any of the leaders here at the church.

We'd love to pray with you and give you some next steps here this morning.

Let's pray.

God, your gift, your free gift of Jesus Christ.

Your free gift of the Holy Spirit.

I pray that we would never grow callous to them, that we would never take them for granted, that we would never become accustomed to the privileges that we have through Jesus to be able to even talk to you and approach you in this way.

And through the Holy Spirit, Lord, to walk in such a manner where you want to be so intimately involved in everything that we do.

You want to reveal so much about yourself to us.

Where we realize that these gifts were not free to you.

That Jesus sacrificed so much and gave everything.

And so did you, Father, in the giving of your son to us.

But it's free to us to accept that gift and then to have the seal, the promise of the Holy Spirit living inside of us.

Help us to be appreciative, help us to be disciplined, to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit in our life.

And we thank you so much for the words that we hold in our hands right now that are inspired by the Holy Spirit, specifically for us to be able to hear your voice at will.

Thank you for the access that we have to these Bibles, Lord, that so many other countries don't.

Help us to take advantage of all of the blessings and privileges that you have given us.

I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.