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Renewing Your Mind
The Role of the Holy Spirit
00:26:23
The Holy Spirit bears witness to genuine believers that they are the children of God (Rom. 8:16). Today, Joel Beeke examines five evidences of the Spirit’s witness in the life of a Christian. Request Assurance of Faith, Joel Beeke’s video teaching...
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- [00:00]
Joel Beeke
Owen has a beautiful word picture. He paints the natural human heart as a thick woods. And he says, by nature it's just all woods. But he says the woods won't be cleared off completely until you die.
- [00:20]
Nathan W. Bingham
The Holy Spirit is at work in his people. He is sanctifying us progressively. And as we grow in holiness, our assurance can increase. In fact, the work of the Spirit is key to our assurance. As Paul says in Romans 8:16, the Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God. So how does the Spirit witness with our Spirit? That's what we'll consider today on Renewing your mind. Our message today is by our guest teacher, Joel Beake, and it's from his series Assurance of Faith. Don't forget that until tomorrow, you can own this series when you call us at 800-435-4343, with a donation in support of this daily outreach. Well, here's Dr. Beke with five evidences of the witness of the Holy Spirit.
- [01:13]
Joel Beeke
So in this lecture we want to look particularly at five or six evidences of the witness of the Spirit, the witness of the Spirit with our Spirit in relationship to assurance. So I want to read from Romans 8:12, 17. I want to walk you through these verses with these five or six thoughts. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if we live after the flesh, ye shall die. But if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, abba, Father, the Spirit itself beareth witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. Verse 16 of Romans 8 says this literally in the Himself I.e. the Spirit bears witness with our Spirit, that we are children of God. Now, that's awkward English. But in Greek, you see, word order doesn't matter. And often the words that are thrown to the front of the sentence are the ones that are underlined. So here in Romans 8, Paul is saying, himself, the Spirit. It's all about him. Himself, that is, the Spirit is the one who bears witness with our Spirit, that we our children of God. So what are the evidences of the witness of the Spirit in relation to assurance? In these six verses, I read Romans 8, 12, 17. Well, the first you find in verse 12, and for lack of a better word, I'm coining a word. Oughtness. Oughtness. What we ought to be thinking or how we ought to be living. Spirit's work is to develop in the very first place an oughtness within us. Look at verse 12. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live after the flesh, we ought not be living after the flesh, but when the Spirit indwells us, we ought to be living by the Spirit. So Paul is saying, when you are a son of God, there ought to be in you a holy revulsion for the things of the flesh. And the things of the Spirit ought to be amplified within you, so that you want the beauty and the glory and the things of the Spirit to be part and parcel of who you are. And you want this revulsion against sin. You want to feel uncomfortable in the presence of sin, you want to run away from sin. There's a sense when the Spirit works in our conscience, a corroborating witness, he forms our conscience to want to do the things that are right and not to want to do the things that are wrong. That's why we're so grieved when we find ourselves not doing that which is good and we find ourselves doing that which is evil. Because it goes against the oughtness of how we ought to be living, which the Holy Spirit fashions in our consciences. An oughtness. Every believer has that outwardly man by nature has a certain kind of oughtness in terms of his conscience, like an internal policeman. Oh, that goes against my conscience. People will say, but in the believer, that oughtness is not just like a policeman, but it's like it's connected with the Holy Spirit, whom I love, who I want to please. Richard Sibbes says we ought to entertain the Holy Spirit. Like when you entertain someone. You get everything ready in your house and you have refreshments ready. You want the Spirit to dwell within you and to teach you this oughtness that's the foundation. Number two, verse 13. The Spirit works within us what the Bible calls mortification, kind of a fancy theological word which simply means to kill, a mortification of the deeds of the body. Look at verse 13. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die. But if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify, do kill, put the sword through the deeds of the body, ye shall live. So the Spirit uses this oughtness he plants within us, this not living after the flesh, to lead us to mortify or to put to death the deeds of the flesh. And that is so critical for any progress in spiritual life. John Owen said so famously, be killing sin or sin will be killing you. Be killing sin or sin will be killing you. You see, to kill sin, to clear the woods of sin in our heart is a critical part of the whole process of sanctification. And the more we experience that, the more assurance we will have that our desire is our God word and therefore that we are the children of God. Owen has another beautiful word picture by the way. He paints the natural human heart as a thick woods. And he says by nature it's just all woods. Now we think of woods as positive, but think of woods as negative for a moment. Our whole nature is just like thick woods and brush, the brush of sin. And he says when the Spirit comes in this life, he cleans out little patches and you maybe conquer that sin over there and there's some brush that's taken away, some trees removed. There's a bit of a clearing there and then there's a bit of a clearing over there and over here and over here. And as you grow in grace, more and more gets cleared out. There's a progressive sanctification. But he says the woods won't be cleared off completely until you die. There's always going to be the brush of sin, the underground brush of sin, the above ground brush of sin, the woods that are impediments in your spiritual life. But the more that gets cleared away, the better. And your aim must be to always be killing all sin so that sin does not kill you. The Spirit will help you. He helps you by making you alert to sin, by making you grieve over sin, by applying the sin killing work of Christ at the cross to you, by fighting the good fight of faith and by enabling you to put the sword through sin. That's all the work of the Spirit within you. You've got to give him the credit for that. Now number three is the leading of the Spirit. You see that in verse 14. That's another witness of our sonship. Paul says, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they. That is symphatic in the Greek, they alone. They alone are the sons of God. So this leading is an ongoing activity demonstrated by the present tense and the passive voice verb. The Spirit's leading is one of the most challenging subjects in the Scripture. We know that he leads believers. We know that being led, they are therefore children of God. But what does it mean? We know that he guides all believers. But what does it mean? I think for purposes of simplicity, we can break it down to two words. Illumination and direction. Illumination and direction. And both are necessary. The Spirit must illumine our minds, inform us of our duty, and then enable us to walk in the right direction to keep God's precepts. It's sort of like this. We had a fellow classmate in Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who was blind. And sometimes if he was going in the same direction I was going in, I would. I would lead him by the hand from class to class. And he'd still use his dick, but I would take him by the arm and I would lead him along. And his feet would go. I wasn't doing all the work. His feet would go. He's going like this. Would he have gotten there without me? Not a chance. He needed me, but yet he was involved. And you see, it's something like that in sanctification. It's a Spirit who takes us and leads us along by illuminating our souls, enlightening us to what's right and what's God honoring. And then he gives us direction. He shows us the way to go. And it's like we're holding onto his arm and. And we see through a glass darkly, and we're walking along, but our feet are going. And we want to obey him. And he makes us willing in the day of his power. This is the leadership of the Holy Spirit. And the beautiful thing is that the Spirit uses his word, his own written word, the book of which he's a supreme author, to do this. Thy word is as a lamp unto my feet and a light upon my path by the gracious Spirit. And so the idea in Old Testament Bible times was those lamps you would carry in the middle of the night, close to the ground, and you could just see a couple steps ahead. It wasn't like headlights of a car. You could see way ahead. No, you're just a couple steps ahead, and you can see where you're going. So you just follow the light. So often when the Spirit leads us, we can't see a long distance ahead. We don't know where he's taking us. But he lightens the path one step at a time. And all we've got to do is follow him, be in concert with him. Richard Sibbes has a whole section in his book that talks about how the Holy Spirit is a pianist. And he says he plays a piano concerto upon the tune of our soul. And he makes heavenly music by leading us in the way of God. And we are souls that are receptive. To his illumination and to his direction. Well, that is a beautiful thought indeed. So he leads us by his word. In an intimate, personal way. He leads you, every dear believer, in your own unique path. You know, as one of the old Puritans said, boats can leave London, England, and they can sail to New York. And every single boat that leaves London that ends up in New York will dock in the same places. But there's no two boats that take exactly the same path through the sea. God is unique in leading every one of his believers. And then fourth is adoption. Adoption. The Spirit leads us because we belong to him and to God, to the triune God, for we are the sons of God through adoption. And the consciousness of that you see is so liberating. Verse 15 says, for ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, that is slavish fear. But you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby you cry, abba, father. So the Spirit witnesses with you, you see that you're a son of God. And therefore when you come into great need, you remember we saw that earlier, that this verse talks about crying out in great need. You cry out, abba, father. Abba just means father, dear father. Really, dear father, father. And you cry out to God by the leading of the Spirit. You cling to the Father, which is great and beautiful, and you find liberty in your sonship, in clinging to God and to his promises and to your Father in heaven. Now, Derek Thomas tells a story. I've heard him tell it several times. He's told it to me personally, too. Of the first time in his life, he said he really fully understood this word, abba, dear father. He said he was walking in Israel behind a Jew who was dressed up in all the regalia of the Orthodox Jews with the little curlicue things and the whole bit. And he had a son. And they were going by the hand and they were going to the. And they were a bit late. So the father was dragging the son behind him, and the boy was trying to catch up, and he was running as fast as he could. And then he tried to walk, but his father's going too fast. His feet couldn't go fast enough. And he got more and more frustrated. He was tired, and the father just kept dragging him along. And finally the boy took his hand out of his father's hand and he just sat down and he said, hubba, hubba, hubba, hubba, hu. And Derek said the father turned around and looked at his boy and he just scooped him up and he put him on his shoulders. And he walked away. And he said, that's what happens when we cry out, abba, Father, in our great need, the Father picks us up, scoops us along, and meets every need of the soul. And Paul is saying, we do that by the Spirit. The Spirit makes us cry out to God. That boy didn't run in the opposite direction. He didn't abandon his father. He just said, I can't go on, Father. I need thy help. Abba, Abba. Abba. And then Derek said, then I understood the cry of urgency when we cry out for the Father to help us. And so then the Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we are the sons of God. We cry out to God and he helps us and we experience that. And when he helps us and scoops us up and in arms us, we feel like Thomas, my Lord and my God. And I am thy adopted child. Oh, what a blessing to be adopted by God. And then the fifth is the witnessing ministry, the witnessing ministry of the Spirit itself that you find in the next verse, verse 16. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God. Now, we've talked about that at length a few lectures ago, so I can be very brief here. All I want to stress with you is this, that when the Spirit bears witness with our Spirit, that we are the sons of God, our entire life changes. Our relationship with God changes. Because now everything God does to us, he does to us as his child. He's our Father, not just our judge. Now our relationship to the world changes. As Jesus said, if you are adopted. 1 John 3:1,3, the world knows you not because the world hated me, it will hate you also. We need to expect hostility from the world. When we are adopted children of God, our relationship with ourselves changes because 1 John 3 says, Every man that has this hope in himself purifies himself, even as he is pure. We will want to pursue holiness. And our relationship to the future changes because John tells us in verse 2, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. That is Jesus. So our future, our relationship to ourselves, our relationship to God, our relationship to the world, and our relationship to our brothers and sisters in Christ also changes because now they're our brothers and sisters, not just strangers in the pew sitting next to us, that we can criticize. And John goes on to talk about that later, actually in First John 3, where he says, you should actually be willing to die for each other because you belong in the same family. So once you're adopted, you see it governs everything about you and who you are. It governs your whole life, just like it governed Jesus whole life because he was the Son of the Father. He said, my meat and drink is to do his business. My whole life is governed by the fact that I'm the Son of the Father. And so a Christian's entire life is governed by this fact. I'm an adopted son. I belong to God's family. I once preached in Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle. And a lady came down from the balcony afterwards, and she was just weeping profusely. I spoke about Heaven and about the eternal family in heaven, and she said, I'm an orphan. I have no brothers and sisters. The only relative I know of that I have is an uncle, and he's in Australia, on the other side of the world, and he's a drunk. And this week I was just holed up in my apartment and I was weeping repeatedly about my loneliness. But she said in this sermon, you made me look around and say I belong to the biggest family on earth. These are my brothers and my sisters. Why should I weep? I should rejoice. You see, that's the fruit of adoption. You look at all of life differently. And then finally there is a concluding application from this about suffering, the Spirit's role in our hardship and our suffering. You see that in verse 17. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ. If so, be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together. So if we belong to the family of God, if the Spirit does all these things in us, all six of these things from Romans 8, then we're heirs, joint heirs with Christ of the heavenly inheritance. You belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God, and all things belong to you, because all things are in Christ. The meek shall inherit the earth. Everything belongs to the believer. You're an heir and a joint heir with Christ. You have a full inheritance. An heir has the full right, legal right to ownership, because of the will and testament made by the person giving the inheritance. How astonishing. The sons of God are the heirs of the triune God himself. And so you possess all things. So don't worry about some suffering that the Spirit is doing in you, working through you so that you become an heir of God. That's just a little light suffering in this life so that you may become an eternal joined heir with the Father and with the Son. And this inheritance, Peter tells us, can never be defiled and can never be lost and can never be divided. God gives all his kingdom, said one puritan, not half of it to each of his children. So if you're a child of God, you are far more than a multi multi multibillionaire. You own everything in heaven and on earth. The meek shall inherit the earth and and Romans 8:12 17 makes clear therefore, that the witness of the Spirit with your spirit in these six areas is an incredibly important part of your entire life and of your assurance of faith. So don't fear your suffering. You're on your way to glory. John Trapp said, he who fears a rainy day is forgiving that he's riding to be crowned. For he who is riding to glory need not fear a rainy day or two. You're on your way to glory. You're on your way to the best that there is yet to come, and so cry out in every affliction. Abba Father.
- [23:45]
Nathan W. Bingham
What a beautiful line to end today's episode, he who is riding to glory need not fear a rainy day or two. I had to text that line to several believers I know needed encouragement. Who might you share today's message with? Remember, renewing your mind is easily shareable from our dedicated YouTube channel. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham and this is the Wednesday edition of Renewing youg Mind. Thanks for being with us. There are rainy days in the Christian life, aren't there? And we need encouragement. Gospel truths to bring comfort, and we need to understand how God works to increase our assurance and restore the joy of our salvation. So I do encourage you to request the complete 11 part series from Joel Beeke, Assurance of Faith. While there's still time. This offer ends tomorrow, so give a donation today at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800-435-4343 and we'll send it to you on DVD while also unlocking Lifetime digital access to all the messages and the study guide in the free Ligonier app and@ligonier.org as well. There's also a digital only version of this offer for our global listening audience or for those who prefer to stream@renewingyourmind.org Global Every time I've listened to this series, I've been helped and found a new nugget of truth. So don't simply respond to this week's offer. Return to these messages again and again. If you're looking for more regular encouragements in the Christian faith, I also recommend Sinclair Ferguson's weekday devotional podcast, Things Unseen. Monday through Friday, Dr. Ferguson provides thoughtful reflections on the Christian life and and our relationship with God. Simply search for things unseen wherever you listen to podcasts or visit ligonier.org thingsunseen to conclude our time. In this series tomorrow, Joel Beeke explores some practical applications of assurance. So don't miss Thursday's episode here on Renewing youg Mind.
- [25:57]
Joel Beeke
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