Morning.
I just want to read a couple of verses before we begin. In Ezekiel, Chapter 36, starting with verse 25:
Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean:
from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you:
and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes,
and ye shall keep Mine ordinances, and do them.
And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers;
and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God.
And then in Romans Chapter 8, verse 14:
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
Let’s pray.
Father, we do just want to give You thanks again for giving us the Savior, Jesus Christ. Lord, we are so, so glad that You did not leave us to ourselves, that You did not just destroy everything. But You saved us. You gave us a Savior, and we want to honor Him today.
Lord Jesus, we ask that You would speak to us through Your Word and bear witness to the truth. And Lord, may the truth set us free. That is all we ask. We cannot ask anything else. There is nothing that we can give; it all must come from You.
And so, we are asking that You would be speaking, that You would bear witness to the truth. Let us see the truth. Let us know the truth. We ask this in Jesus’ name.
It has been a little while since I have last been up here, and the last couple of times I have been talking on 2 Timothy. It has struck me that, if these are the last days, what did the apostles say in their last letters to encourage the people who were being left behind?
So I have been looking at Paul’s letter to Timothy, since it is his last letter. We talked about it not being a letter of teaching. He gives no real teaching in this. This is not like Romans, Ephesians, or Corinthians, where he has some type of teaching.
You might think, “Well, he might do that. He might just give one last shotgun blast and cover the gamut of things that the Lord has revealed to me.” But instead, it is a letter of exhortation. It is a letter to encourage somebody who is weak, somebody who is left in a position of bearing the torch, so to speak.
Now that Paul is going to be gone, Timothy is to carry on—not to carry on Paul’s work, but to carry on what the Lord is doing, what the Lord has begun, and to see it through for his generation, for Timothy’s generation.
We have seen that Timothy is just a weak guy. He is not a teenager. When we think of Timothy, I remember, as a young Christian, thinking, “Well, I can relate to Timothy because he is young.” Well, Timothy was probably in his forties. To me, that is young. But he was not some teenage guy; otherwise, he would not be in the position he was in.
But he was in a position of great responsibility. The Lord does want us to be in a place of responsibility and in a place of carrying the torch, of having that testimony of Jesus in us.
So Paul is passing the torch to Timothy, and Timothy is going to carry it in a pagan world. Ephesus was known for its idols. Even though the Lord did great things there, Ephesus was still Ephesus.
Paul commits it to this weak man—a man weak in himself—not because he trusts Timothy, but because, as we have read before in 2 Timothy, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed.”
Paul has committed this to the Lord. In looking at the last things Paul is going to say to Timothy, we found, first of all, that he starts by putting him on a good foundation.
The first time we talked about it, the solid ground was simply this: “You are beloved. You are a beloved son.” It is for us to know also that we are beloved. We are the beloved ones of God.
He told Timothy that the risen Lord is the One interceding for him, and that should give him hope. A measure of faith has been given to him as a means of exchange. That is the way we do business with God. Our medium of exchange is faith.
Everyone has been given a measure of faith. This faith is to be exercised so that we might find and do God’s will, and also find that He is able to strengthen us to do His will.
Secondly, the last time we talked, Paul reminded Timothy that God had called him. He had called him with a holy calling. In other words, He had called him apart from the world; He had called him to Himself.
It was not according to what Timothy had done, not according to his own works, not because he was something special—like, “Oh, gee whiz, you are such a fabulous guy. I want you on My side.” It was because God had a purpose for him, and God wanted to accomplish that purpose.
Grace was given—the great enabler—that he might do the will of God. Then Paul encouraged him to respond to the calling that God had on him. He said, “Respond like a soldier. Respond like an athlete.”
Now that the foundation has been laid, Paul, being the master builder—and as the master builder, he is not the guy putting the building together, not the man with the hammer and nails, but the architect—proceeds to tell Timothy about the materials for building on this foundation.
“I have set the foundation. The foundation is Christ. Now how do we build?” Here is where we start thinking that we are the material of God. That is a false premise. We are not the material of God.
God does not use us as material because we are bad material. That is it. I think Jerry was talking about going to Home Depot or Lowe’s and getting the wood that we used to call the throwaway stuff—the stuff that you might build a doghouse out of, the termite-laden stuff. Of course, you do not want termite-laden wood, because the termites would crawl into your house.
But it is the refuse. It even says in 1 Corinthians that God has called the refuse. He has called that type of people to Himself, not because they are of any good that people would want to say, “Oh, gee, I want to be like that,” but because He wants the glory. He has the glory in doing this.
In looking at the material, we want to look at a verse in 2 Timothy, Chapter 1, verse 7:
For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness;
but of power and love and discipline.
So, what is the material of God? This is it: He has given us a Spirit. I want to say that He has given us His Spirit. I know in our Bibles it may have a little “s” here, but what is the only Spirit that God has given us? It is His own Spirit. It is the Spirit of the Son.
Let us look at this Spirit. What has been given to us? What is the material that God is working with, or has given us to build with? Paul describes the Spirit in four ways in this one verse.
A lot of times we say that God has given us Jesus, and what we mean is that He has given us Jesus on the cross. That is half the gift. It is a big half of the gift, but it is half the gift.
The other side is that He has given us His Spirit. Jesus said, “I will not leave you by yourselves. I am not leaving you to yourselves, but I am giving you the Spirit. When I ascend to the Father, the Spirit will come.”
The word “fear” here is not the word usually used for fear, the word from which we get phobia—I think the Greek word is phobos. But it is not that.
In Romans 8:15-17, it says:
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear;
but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God:
and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.
It is repeated again in Galatians 4:6-7:
And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
So that thou art no longer a bondservant, but a son;
and if a son, then an heir through God.
The word for fear here is not phobos, but deilia. This word is never used in a positive way. It is always used in a negative way in the New Testament. Sometimes it is used in the sense of cowardice—being a coward. That is not a very positive light, is it? Sometimes it means timid or timidity.
It is a timidity that keeps us from having what God would have for us. It is much like what we see in Peter. Peter told the Lord, so full of himself, so full of self-confidence, “I will never deny You. I will even die with You.”
Then we find him possessed by cowardice. When he was asked, “Do you know this man? Were you not with Him?” he denied it three times. He was threatened by a servant girl. That was how brave Peter was. His spirit of fear, his spirit of cowardice, was uncovered even by a little servant girl.
But it was covered with bravado, because in the end Peter is cursing and swearing, “I do not know the Man.” We try to cover up our fear, our timidity, by doing things like this. But is it not interesting that in Luke, just a little look from the Lord uncovered Peter? Or in Mark, it simply says he heard the rooster crow the second time. Just a little thing uncovered who he was.
But it is okay to be uncovered. Did you know that? Because when we are uncovered, then we seek for help. And that is good.
We can look at this fear, then, as fear of men. Timothy probably had a little bit of that. Here is a younger brother, compared to some of the older ones, put in a place of responsibility. Paul, in 1 Timothy, tells him how to rebuke an elder, how to deal with this, and how to deal with that. Timothy could be saying, “I am just a little guy. How can I do these things?”
He could be afraid of man, afraid of carrying out his responsibilities because of what other people would think of him. But even so, God says, “I have not given you a spirit of fear.”
What happened to Peter? We know Peter had this spirit of fear when he denied the Lord. But in Acts Chapter 4, after the lame man was healed, the Sanhedrin brought Peter and John before them and threatened them. These were the very ones who turned Jesus over to Pilate.
Peter could say to them:
Whether it is right in the sight of God to hearken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye:
for we cannot but speak the things which we saw and heard.
What a change in Peter. Why is this? What happened? Pentecost happened. That is what happened. The Spirit of God came into him.
Brothers and sisters, this is one of the things we so often miss. We do not think much of Pentecost. Growing up as a Catholic, we celebrated Easter and Christmas. Those were the big days. But we also had the Feast of Pentecost, one of the holy days of obligation. Pentecost was celebrated.
We celebrate the Lord’s Table, but in looking at His death, we should also look at His resurrection. Even Paul, writing this letter to Timothy, says in 2 Timothy 2:8, “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.” He does not just say, “Crucified,” but, “Risen from the dead,” because that infers, first, that He was crucified; but lastly, He was raised.
When He was raised and seated at the right hand of the Father, then He gave the Spirit. That Spirit is not just with us, and it is not just upon us, but has been put in us.
Brothers and sisters, this is the building material that God uses. God does not use you because you have a sweet personality or a harsh personality. He does not use you because of your athletic talent or your great abilities. He uses you because His Spirit is in you, and His Spirit leads us to do the will of God.
On our own, in our own spirit, we would not do it. Most of us are good Americans—good post-Vietnam War Americans, people of entitlement. Everything is given to us, and we do not have to do anything. But here we have a Spirit that leads us, and we must be led. We have to be led.
When I say, “Well, that is Peter. Of course Peter could do that. He is Peter. He walked with the Lord. He walked on water. You have got to expect it of Peter,” I started looking at Foxe’s Book of Martyrs last night. I said, “Let us find somebody who is Joe Blow, because how else can we be encouraged?”
Here is a guy you probably all know: Germanicus. All it said in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was this: “Germanicus, a young convert.” Young.
As a kid, I could scare pretty easily. I cannot imagine—and I do not know if you have ever imagined this too—being martyred. What would you do if they said, “It is going to be your head, or you denounce your faith”?
A lot of us will say, like Peter, “I will die for You,” but when it comes down to it, I doubt myself. I just doubt myself, because I love myself.
But here we have Germanicus. Having been thrown to the beasts, he displayed such courage that several pagans watching were converted. It does not say he survived the throwing to the beasts. He died. He was martyred. But he did not go unwillingly.
That is a promise the Lord gives us. Remember when the Lord was talking to His disciples? He said, “They are going to bring you before the courts. Do not worry about what you are going to say when you go before them, because I will give you what you need at that time.”
We can even look at Peter. We see him before the Sanhedrin, and we say, “Oh, that is marvelous.” But remember when he was in prison and the angel let him out? What was he doing in prison before the angel let him out?
First of all, he was probably waiting to be executed, because James had just been executed. The king thought the people liked it, so Peter would be next after Passover. What do we find Peter doing in prison? Sleeping. Sleeping on the day before his execution.
That, to me, is just a marvelous thing. I do not want to compare this to an execution, but on the night before my wedding—I know, you guys are getting the wrong idea—but you know how nervous you can get. You get these ideas: “Oh my gosh, am I doing the right thing?”
I remember, the night before the wedding, fearing and saying, “Lord, what if? What if?” But I slept like a baby. It was the Lord saying, “Be at peace. I have everything under control.”
I think it is the same thing for us as far as the fear of man goes. We get into situations like that, and it is not our great knowledge that will get us out. We may not have something great to say. You might think, “Well, I have to find a speech before I die so everybody gets converted.” The Lord just says, “Leave it to Me. Just leave it to Me.”
You just trust Me. You have trusted Me for your salvation; trust Me for your dying.
Now I want to use fear in another way. In that verse from Romans, it talks about not receiving a spirit of bondage again to fear. I think some of us are afflicted with fear in the sense that we are afraid to be exposed because of who we are, or sometimes even afraid to come to the Lord.
We fear coming to the Lord because we feel He is so disappointed with us. I know that fear. Hebrews 10:38 says He is not pleased with those who draw back. We fear that we do not measure up and that God is going to do something. But listen: God has given us a Spirit, not of fear, but one that cries out, “Abba, Father.”
The Spirit leads us to the Father. He does not lead us away from the Father. He may convict us of sin, but for the purpose of leading us back to the Father.
Abba—what an interesting word. It is “Daddy.” The Spirit leads us to call out, “Daddy.” When my kids used to call me Daddy, I was the protector. They ran to Daddy. I provided for them all that they needed. I loved them. I was approachable. I was their daddy.
The Spirit in us calls out, “Abba,” to draw near in that sense. He also calls out, “Father.” As I grew up, I did not call my dad “Daddy” anymore. It would be interesting to see a guy bigger than his dad saying, “Hey, Daddy, how are you doing?” It is just not right for a young man to call his father Daddy.
But I started to realize who my dad was. My dad was not just this Superman. Of course, I saw his faults. I remember one time, when I was a carpenter, that my dad, who was a union representative, came onto the job site. The respect with which he was treated blew my mind, because I knew my dad.
The people he was the union representative for knew him for who he was as a union rep. All of a sudden, I got a new look at my dad. I saw that my dad was respected, and I saw his place.
It is the same with us. We call out, “Father,” in the sense of saying, “Father, I recognize who You are. I recognize Your place. I recognize Your power. I recognize Your authority. I recognize Your will.”
The Spirit in us, whom He has put in us, cries out, “Abba, Father.” He enables us to come boldly before the throne of grace. I did not say to come brashly, knocking things over and saying, “Give me what is mine.”
It is more like the prodigal. When he came back, even though he said, “I am not worthy,” he had the boldness to think he could come back and go before the Father, and even call Him Father. The prodigal called him father.
It is the same with us. The Spirit in us can come before our Father boldly, with confidence that we are His child. Even our Lord Jesus used this term, “Abba, Father.” In Mark 14, when He was in the garden praying, He cried out, “Abba, Father, if this cup can pass from Me, let it pass.”
That is the Abba. But, “Not My will, but Your will be done”—that is the Father.
We have the same Spirit in us. This same Spirit is the Spirit that leads us to bow the knee. It does not simply lead us to have the benefits of Daddy; it leads us to the place of growing up and saying, “Not my will, but Your will.” That is the Spirit of Christ in us, if we allow the Spirit to lead us. That is our responsibility: those who are led by the Spirit.
Secondly, it is a Spirit of power. Now we can really go: Spirit of power! I think of Moses parting the Red Sea. I think of raising people from the dead. How about Elijah calling down fire? That is pretty cool.
But in Acts Chapter 1, this is what the Lord Jesus says about the Spirit of power. In verse 8, He says:
But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you:
and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria,
and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Then look at Acts 1:22. They are talking about giving someone Judas’ place, and it says, “One of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.”
So, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me—a witness of His resurrection.
When we are talking about the power of the Holy Spirit, please do not look at what we think is power. Do not look at the show. Bless the Lord that He shows works of power—healings and deliverances.
I read Mel Tari’s book, Like a Mighty Wind, about the Indonesian revival in the 1970s: people walking on water, people raised from the dead—wonderful works of power. But how many of the people who saw the Lord do His deliverances continued following Him? Sometimes we are just there for the show.
I remember going to see Kathryn Kuhlman at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. “Do you believe in miracles?” There were all sorts of crowds. Why? People wanted to see. People want to see works of power.
But works of power are like seeing Babe Ruth hit a home run. It wears off after a while, and you want to see it again. After Babe Ruth does not hit any more home runs, you start booing the guy.
So that kind of power is not what He is talking about. Listen: “You will be witnesses.” Power for witnessing.
A witness is somebody who testifies of what he has seen or experienced. What are we supposed to be witnesses of? Peter was talking to the disciples in verse 22, and he said, “A witness of His resurrection.”
Well, gee whiz, I think I am left out, because that resurrection was two thousand years ago. Can I be a witness of His resurrection? Was I born too late?
Brothers and sisters, it is not the time of the event that we are witnesses of. We are not witnesses to the time, but to the effectiveness of that event.
How might I know the power of His resurrection? Paul even says, “I want to know the power of His resurrection.” How do I get to know the power? How can I be a witness of His resurrection? How can I be what we have been told—a living martyr? A martyr is a witness, right?
The only way we can be a witness is that we must experience something. What is it we are supposed to experience? This is it, from a Charles Wesley hymn:
He breaks the power of cancelled sin,
He sets the prisoner free.
Cancelled sin means that the sin has already been forgiven, right? Yet it still has power. How many of us know that sin still has power even though it is forgiven? But the resurrection says He breaks the power of cancelled sin. Not only is the penalty taken away, but the power of that sin over us is broken.
Or there is another Charles Wesley hymn we sing often:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
How can you find that? That is really it, because a lot of us are looking for that. Let us not fool ourselves. We know the power of sin over us, even though it has been cancelled.
It is almost like Abraham when he had Ishmael. God said, “No, you are going to have Isaac,” and Abraham said, “Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee!” It is almost like saying, “Just let me finish life out as it is. I will make it to heaven. That is good enough for me.”
But that is not God’s will for you. God’s will is that you know life, and life more abundantly.
In John 16:13, it says:
Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come,
He shall guide you into all the truth.
We can be discouraged because we see ourselves as we are, under the power of sin. But the Spirit in us, if we will give ourselves to the Spirit—I am not saying you have to work something up—will lead you to the place where you finally see what He has done for you.
I cannot tell you, “This is what you do to do it.” I am just saying, are you open to letting the Spirit lead you? Are you open to this possibility? Are you open to the Spirit saying, “I want to lead you here”?
It is like we were talking about Watchman Nee one time. “How can I reckon myself as dead? I reckon, I reckon, I reckon—it is not there, it is not there.” He struggled with that for a couple of years, until finally the Lord showed him he was dead.
We do not know how the Lord showed him. But, “Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke. The dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off.”
Brothers and sisters, I wish I could tell you, “Do this and do that, and everything is going to be cool.” But I cannot. God has put His Spirit in us, who can lead us into all truth. That truth can unlock the things that hold us, the things that hold power over us, and set us free.
That is a wonderful thing to have hope in. Hope is expectation that it will come to pass. If we see the hope, is it hope? No. But if we take hold of it and say, “Look, I am going to believe You,” then we walk by faith.
It is like Joseph when he went to prison. He knew that God had promised him great things, but he was in prison. So he worked as a prisoner, and he did all these things, and God blessed him until finally the day came when he was brought before Pharaoh, and Pharaoh put him on the throne. Thirteen years. Thirteen years.
Or Hudson Taylor. Before he learned about this life, this exchanged life, he struggled and struggled and struggled. Then finally the Lord opened something up to him. He did not give up. He went along doing his thing, but he kept saying, “Lord, I just cannot go on like this. What are You going to do?”
The Spirit led him. The Spirit opened the Word to him, opened the Word of all truth. It came with revelation. I cannot give you revelation, but the Spirit can. God has left us with His Spirit, and that is our hope.
We have been given a Spirit that allows us to walk in the power of His resurrection, to walk in freedom from the power of sin. “Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Paul does not even tell us how. He just thanks the Lord. As He leads me into truth, step by step, I find myself becoming freer and freer to do what? To serve God.
The power, the freedom, is that we may serve God. How many of us say, “Lord, I want to serve You, but look at the baggage I am carrying”? The Lord says, “Just serve Me. I will take care of the baggage in My time.”
We want to see it now and then. The Lord says that the just shall walk by faith. You just walk. Serve Me because I said you could serve Me. In My time, I will show you how free you are. I will lift the burden from your back. I will open the locks. I will set you free.
And you will be a witness. You will testify of what great things I have done for you. That will be your testimony: how the Lord has set me free. That is the testimony of Jesus—He is Lord.
The crucifixion shows that He is the Servant of God. The resurrection shows that He is Lord, because He broke the power of sin and death. He was raised up. He is Lord, and that is our testimony. He is Lord in our lives. He is not just some vague Lord of the universe; He is Lord of our very lives.
The Spirit is Lord in us. The Spirit is Lord over our flesh. This is the salvation of the soul. Our spirit is saved, but our soul needs to be saved. Those who are led by the Spirit become sons of God.
Third, it says it is the Spirit of love. I do not know much about love, but I will share a few verses because we are running out of time here.
In Luke 9:51-56, Jesus has His face set like flint toward Jerusalem. The Samaritans will not receive Him because He is going to Jerusalem. He had sent the apostles ahead, and they said, “Will they put us up?” But the Samaritans said, “No, You are going to Jerusalem. We will not put You up.”
John says, “Lord, do You want us to call fire down from heaven? We will just burn them out.” The Lord stops and says, “You know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” John and James were called the sons of thunder. There was a storm around them.
Even though we think of John as the apostle of love, I think he was a son of thunder before the resurrection. But Jesus said, “I came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” That is love. The love of God has not come to destroy; it has come to save.
In Matthew 5:43-48, the Lord says:
Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy:
but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you;
that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven:
for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.
For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye?
do not even the publicans the same?
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?
do not even the Gentiles the same?
Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
In John 15:9, Jesus says, “Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you.” Then in verse 12: “This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.”
Every time the word love is used in these verses, it is agape. None of it is phileo, which is brotherly love—like we are friends, we are buddies, or maybe we are family. I can love my family. I can put up with my family. But the people outside my family, I have problems with.
But this agape is even the word used in 2 Timothy 1:7: a spirit of agape. This is the 1 Corinthians 13 love. This is the kind of love that is not a response to somebody. It is a love that just goes out because that is who the person is who is loving. That is God. God is love.
This love does not have to wait until someone does something so that I can respond in love. It just goes out.
When my daughters were born—I hate to say this, girls—but babies are not the prettiest things. They are not. They are covered with that gunk. They have to scrub it off of them. They are red-looking, pink, wrinkly, and they cry. What does that offer me?
But when my daughters were born, I loved them right away. They did not have to do anything. It was who they were. The love came right out of me because they are my bone and flesh of my flesh.
How much more does God, who created us in His image, love us? Even as sinners. None of us would be here today if God said, “I do not love sinners.” Where would we be?
But He does love sinners, not because they do anything for Him, but because of who He is. He created us. He loves us. He loves us so much that He would not let us go without giving us a Savior and letting us choose for ourselves whether we want His grace or not.
Another thing about love: we have been talking about unity the last few weeks. Colossians 3:14 talks about love. The New American Standard, I think, says it best: “Love is the perfect bond of unity.”
The bond here is a glue. It is a glue that sticks us together. It is superglue, not the little white paste. I use white glue a lot because I glue maps on things so I can Xerox them. After a couple of times through the Xerox machine, that glue dissipates.
But you get a good, strong glue, and it holds. What I am saying is this: it is not a teaching that can hold us together. It is not some belief that can hold us together. It is love that holds us together. It is an action that holds us together.
A teaching has no arms or hands. A teaching in itself has no life. Love is the life of God. Love allows us to be the hands and arms of God, going out to one another. It allows us to embrace as God would embrace.
This is so important, brothers and sisters. Love is in action. It is not a teaching. You can love without having been taught.
We talk about loving because He first loved us, but sooner or later it comes out to this: we love because He is in us. That is it. We are led by the Spirit to love.
We can say, “Oh, I just do not have the love in me.” Go out and do it. Go out and love. The feeling can come later. The blessing can come later. You just go out and be obedient to what the Lord is telling you to do. Let Him take care of the other stuff.
That is what He has given us. He has given us a Spirit that loves—the brethren, and the world also—that the world might be saved.
Finally, He has given us a Spirit of a sound mind. I think the word is sophronismos. It can be translated a number of ways: sound mind, self-control, discipline, sober-mindedness, or wise discretion. Literally, the two words that make it up mean “to save the mind.”
That is a good thing, huh? To save the mind. When I get older—my body is already cracking up—I want my mind saved. If I cannot walk or cannot do things, I want to be sharp as a tack. I want to do crossword puzzles when I am an old man.
But, to save the mind: “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” I have a couple of examples.
In Mark 5:15 and through verse 20, we have the story of the demoniac who had a legion of demons. A legion would be like three thousand. After the Lord dealt with him and cast them out, we find the demoniac sitting, clothed, and in his right mind.
I want to say this: he would not be in his right mind if he was not sitting and clothed. He used to be running around the tombs. He was always running around, hurting himself. In fact, he was running around because he could not get away from himself.
Some of us do that too. We are trying to get away from ourselves so badly that we have no rest. When the Lord chased those demons out, he could finally sit down.
He was sitting in what Christ had done for him. All the things he could do—including cutting himself with stones—we hurt ourselves sometimes. We make ourselves feel better, thinking that somehow it redeems us. We are somewhat Catholic, are we not? We have those little things where we are whipping ourselves, thinking that is going to give us something. It does not. It just makes it worse and worse and worse.
But he came to the place of believing, “I am just going to rest in what the Lord has done for me, because I cannot make it any other way. I am going to try this.” The Lord had done something for him. That is why we find this man sitting. He is now at perfect rest.
He is sitting, just like you guys are sitting, in the weight of who He is. He is not worried, because he is being held.
Second, he is clothed. He has taken who Christ is into himself. He is clothed in Christ. Because of that, he is in his right mind.
His right mind is this: he is in agreement, full acceptance, and enjoyment of sitting and being clothed. That is being in your right mind.
Romans 12:3 says this about being in your right mind: not thinking too highly of yourself, but putting others above you. That is your right mind. “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,” who, though being God, did not grasp, but humbled Himself.
Brothers and sisters, this is the mind of shepherds. Shepherds do not think, “I am the shepherd and you are the sheep.” Shepherds think, “How do I lead the sheep? Where can I lead them? How can I keep them safe?” The sheep matter to God.
1 Peter 4:7 talks about being sober for the sake of prayer. That is the same word. Be alert. Be aware. Be aware of what the Spirit is showing you, so you can pray.
It also means the mind is trained. We train ourselves to do multiplication tables. We train ourselves to write our letters. We do all these little memory games. Our minds are trained to know God, to hear His voice.
Where do we hear His voice? You say, “In our spirit,” yes, but it has to come into our mind too. It has to be made known.
It also means self-control: the Spirit ruling over the soul. This is the salvation of the soul—God in His place, in the spirit, over the soul, over the ego.
Brothers and sisters, we can look at things and say, “Gee, I am bad material.” Amen. You are; I am. We are just bad material. But we are not God’s material. God’s material begins with the Spirit, and He has given us the Spirit. He will use that Spirit to lead us.
It says we are going to be complete. Do you believe that? That is the whole thing here. We walk by faith. We do not see a lot of things, and that is what discourages us. We do not see it.
We are asked to walk by faith. We are asked to believe God for what He said and trust that His Spirit will take us to the place. His Spirit will show us the right things at the right time, and those things will come to pass.
When you go home today, do not go home saying, “Well, I can never make it.” Go home today and cry, “Abba, Father.” Come close. Let Him reassure you that He has not thrown you out the window, that He has not said, “It is not going to work for you, is it?”
No. Cry out, “Abba, Father. Lord, here I am. Here I am. I give myself to You. Let Your Spirit fall fresh on me. Let me know again His presence in me, His leading. Fill me with Your Spirit afresh.”
Brothers and sisters, we are leaky. There is nothing wrong with asking the Lord to fill you again with the Holy Spirit. There is nothing wrong with it.
This is what the Lord Jesus Himself said:
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?
Brothers and sisters, that is what we should be praying for: “Lord, I am a wreck, but fill me with Your Spirit. Let Him lead me. Be Thou my help.”
Let us pray.
Lord, we do want to thank You today. Again, You have not left us to ourselves. Not only have You forgiven our sins, but Lord, You have not left us to figure things out. You have given us Your Holy Spirit.
Oh Lord, how can we not thank You? How can we not just fall down and say, “Oh Lord, I know I am unworthy, but thank You”?
Oh Lord, I ask for us all that You would fill us with Your Spirit, that we would know the power of Your Spirit. Not that we could do this or that, but that we might know the power of the Spirit to lead us, to open the Word to us, and to show us what is ours.
Lord, bring us to You. Just even bring us to You. Oh Lord, fill us with Your Spirit, we pray. We ask this in Jesus Christ’s name.