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December 8, 2021 12:00 am
Friends of Jesus Christ with friends of the Holy Spirit for the front of the Holy Spirit where the front of the father, James 44 tells us that the unbeliever is the friend of the world.
He doesn't care about God's spirit son father he cares only about the world is the friend of the world and isn't the friend of God. So what is it look like to be a friend of God the spirit was a look like a walk in friendship with the Holy Spirit and Loretta was a look like to not walk in friendship with the Holy Spirit.
What is like to not be the friend of God's spirit, the answer to that question probably changed when God saved the apostle Paul contrasted the mind of the believer with the mind of the unbeliever in Romans 85 through 11 in that passage he makes something clear the difference is not related to intelligence.
The difference involves our desires today Stephen Devi will show you what that means as he continues his series the war with Stevens calling today's message a new obsession could start according to the Bible, the believer rejoices in the Holy Spirit.
Luke 1021 he resolves or decides in the Holy Spirit. Acts 19. He has a conscience that bears witness with the Holy Spirit. Romans 91.
The believer enjoys access to God through the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 218. In fact, the believer allows one another in the body through the power of the Holy Spirit. Colossians 18 so the question is not, do we need the Holy Spirit. The question is how can we survive without him. How can we ever live for God without him. How can we ever progress in our Christian walk without a the question is not doing enough. The question is how would we ever want to try to live a day a moment or an hour. Without this divine powerful, loving, correcting, enabling, protecting, best of all, faithful friend. Interesting that the apostle Paul informs us throughout his letter to the Romans that the entire world can be divided into just two different categories we can apply from chapter 8 as he introduces us to the Holy Spirit that we could divide the world into two categories of people who are friends of the Holy Spirit and people who are not people care about the Holy Spirit people without people go through life depending on the Holy Spirit and those who do not. So Paul will introduce this particular subject, but it reminded me of the outset here only give you the words of our Lord Jesus himself when he referred to his disciples as his friend John 1514. We are the friends of Jesus and for the friends of Jesus Christ with friends of the Holy Spirit where the friend of the Holy Spirit where the front of the father, James 44 tells us that the unbeliever is the friend of the world. He doesn't care about God the spirit son father he cares only about the world is the friend of the world and isn't the friend of God.
So what is it look like to be a friend of God the spirit was a look like a walk in friendship with the Holy Spirit and Laura and I was a look like to not walk in friendship with the Holy Spirit. What is a look like to not be the friend of God's spirit will in this opening paragraph of Romans chapter 8.
Paul begins a series of contrasts between the believer and the unbeliever. Look at verse five with this is what we left off with pick it up there for those who are according to the flesh set their mind on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. Would you notice that Paul focuses on the setting of the mine, the believer sets his mind on spiritual things, and the unbeliever sets his mind on the things of the flesh.
I want to talk about that this morning when Paul contrasted by the way the mind of the believer with the mind of the unbeliever is not referring to IQ.
He is referring to D you want to coin something new here you see it as an intelligence quotient that reveals the difference between the mind of the believer in the mind of the unbeliever. It is their desire quotient isn't the IQ that matters in relationship to God. It is the DQ that matters. What do you desire what you long for what you want in life. David wrote whom have I in heaven but you decide you I desire nothing on earth by flesh of my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever, but as for me, the nearness of God is my good Psalm 73, Paul wrote this is my hearts desire that my brother and will be saved. Romans 1010, Paul also wrote, this is our ambition. This is our passionate desire to be pleasing to God.
Second, reviews five. Not so what you desire. David was a I desire communion with God. Paul would say I desire the unbeliever to know Christ. I desire that my life be pleasing to God.
In other words, Paul says, is my desire that word can mean it is my cause to which I am totally devoted to be pleasing to God.
The truth is your DQ has a lot more to say about you that your eyes Paul writes again, look at verse five, those who are of the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. Those were the spirit implied set their minds on the things of the spirit. The Greek word for setting the mind from the oh are translated to set the mind is a word which refers actually to a person's disposition. It refers to a person meant it refers to the occupation of a person's heart. This is what occupies their minds. This is how they're known. This is the reputation. This is in a very real way, their personality, so you have to ask the question, what are you devoted to upon what have you set your mind, you can literally render the word desire obsession. What are your obsessions what you think about when you get up and what you think about Alan, what are your plans, your hopes, your dream, what assesses and captivates your mind.
I recently read about John not of been born in the late 1700s. Early in his life. He began to reveal a love for art and for birds, even as a teenager he would rise at midnight night after night to go out in the swamps were lived in France and study certain nighthawks. One summer after he moved from France to America and studied a course with his life. The birds of North America. He repeatedly visited the bayous near New Orleans to study rather shy water bird. He would stand the article read almost was next in the stagnant waters, scarcely breathing while poisonous water moccasins swam past his face. It was life threatening work, but he was reported to have said with great joy. What a hobbit I now have pictures of these bird nothing wrong with that.
It is our joy to study the creative handiwork of God and because of that particular obsession that particular desire.Audubon was devoted to studying birds, and he risked his life to suffer all sorts of discomforts for the sake of what he loved to do. I know people who love far less significant things, don't you. I know people who are so captivated by things that are very trivial. Do you I keep a little file right foot stories of people like that and I just use those stories every once in a while and give you one of your not ready for the let me tell you, but this one was cited in the article. Strange world.
Published by campus life. His name was Roy Welling. He won the annual tour did doughnut in Stanton Illinois I'm reading I'm not making this the article I read gave the guidelines to the race contestants got to take five minutes off your total time for every doughnut. They ate during the 30 mile bike race.
Roy Welling didn't cross the finish line 1st during the race he consumed 18 doughnuts and that was enough time to be declared the winner. He was interviewed afterward and he said 89 donuts in the previous year's race, but this year he said I was committed to doubling my doughnuts and having a good race time. I question the man's DQ and his IQ of everybody rides a bicycle needs notice if you getting a dozen known as everybody knows you need a booth with hot coffee. Everybody knows that's how you do that right now to bicycle never ceases to amaze me what people are passionate about what people get involved in what they love to do. The truth is what you love, you think about and what you think about you do and what you do you are me say again what you love is the thing that you think about and what you think about you end up doing, because what you think about you are. In other words, what you are is what you have been becoming nodes early to be so deep and so close to lunchtime but it's true. Solomon put it this way as a man thinks in his heart. What so is a how you think in your heart the things you meditate on your heart desires and dreams and plans of your heart. That happens to be who you are person who has made his mind up about something or holds to a certain idea or belief. We refer to that person is having a mind set right so he says the things he says because we say will that's his mindset. He does the things he does. He votes the way he votes he talks about the things he talks about because that's what that's his mindset. You just need understand his mindset and you can understand him right westward. Paul is referring to. You could paraphrase verse five. Three those who walk in the flesh have a mindset on the flesh, and those walk after the spirit of a mindset on spiritual thing. In other words, a mindset is a way of revealing who you really are a mindset determines how you act one author wrote motivates you and what you do and say and feel determines who you will allow to influence your life decides what you will choose as a source of knowledge and influence affects your view of every experience you have shaped your value system dominate your private and public life with captivates your mind is what you become one youth pastor made an interesting twist on this rather humorously. He wrote about it this way said the more you love something, the more you become like it. For example, I have a friend loves tennis is nothing wrong with that but he didn't realize what he's become. He wears tennis stuff he reads tennis magazines.
He talks about tennis all the time. Even his hair looks like a tennis ball is as I have another friend, the love surfing addresses with first off reserve magazines uses server talking smells like seaweed could this be why the greatest commandment is the love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, because the power to change us is given in relationship and what you love, you become like as well put Paul basically says the same thing in a different way.
Those who are of the flesh.
Love the things of the flesh reminder settlement devoted to it are processed with the things of the world.
Those who love the spirit are obsessed with the spirit world.
That's why we get somebody loves the world, the only thing you talk about things of the world.
He never can talk about the things of the spirit that you get a Christian and guess what you could talk about things of the world, but you eventually want to talk about what the things of the spirit of God. Paul is contrasting two different mindsets.
He is literally contrasting to different disposition now goes one step further and contrasts two different destinations. Look at verse six he writes for the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. In other words, the unbeliever is obsessed with a flash and the believer is obsessed with the spirit and now Paul gives us the fruits of those obsession the fruit of the flesh, the one who panders after the flesh, the one loves the flesh and what a lot of the things of the world alone. That person is heading toward and now experiencing death flash equals death. The one who is obsessed with the things of the spirit of God loves and panders after the things of the spirit of God is pursuing a life and peace. In the next several verses here the apostle Paul will simply summarize the results of these two different dispositions, and these two different destinations by simply giving us what is already taught us in the first seven known to the chapter of the book of Romans verse seven because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God. Your number chapter 1 of Romans four does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not able even to do so. That's Romans chapter 2 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not of the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. That's Romans chapters 3 and four and if Christ is in you. That's Romans chapter 5 though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. That's Romans chapter 6 and seven.
But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who indwells you this is Romans chapter 8. Paul is literally delivering the truth, and as you know, he never pulls any punches. He has already said that man is hostile toward God. He he described the mindset of the flesh in Romans chapter 1, and now he describes it further. In Romans chapter 8 in Romans chapter 1 he wrote these words. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them, for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural and in the same way. Also, the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, there's the word again. This is the mindset of the world. This is the mindset the obsession, the desire of depraved mind, to do those things. Paul writes, which are not proper being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, arrogant and boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, flash equals death. They not only do the same but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. You pursue the flash in the world is totally devoted to the things of the flash in the world is headed for death.
That's the truth. Paul delivers as he usually does. Always does the true he can never be excused. The beating around the bush County not Paul.
The matter how embarrassing the matter how revealing. I recently finished a book on little commentary on the book of Proverbs where the man took several of the Proverbs and gave wonderful insight to them and he said this in his story told the story of a mother who is preparing dinner one evening when a little boy came running into the kitchen. She asked him well. What's mom's little darling been doing all day. He replied I been playing mailman. She wondered out loud mailman happy to do that when you naughty letters. He said all I had a whole bunch of letters what letters were they.
She asked the little boy answer all those letters I found in the bottom drawer of your dresser, all tied up with pretty ribbon. I put one in every mailbox on our street. The news is out. Well you hold in your lap, your hands, maybe even some of it in your heart. The letter, it may be embarrassing and may be revealing. It may be something you want to keep private and confidential. But the news is out people who are governed by the flesh and love the things of the flesh are living dead. They are headed for eternal death and separation from God.
People who are governed by the spirit and love the things of the spirit, then are living redeem and they are experiencing now live in their headed for eternal living in right now in the midst of all of it. For those of you who know and love the spirit you have this wonderful incredible friend and you are no longer a helpless victim of sin. The life-giving Holy Spirit can overwhelm the power of sin and empower everyone of us to lead holy and godly lives. You do not have to sin doesn't mean that a believer is perfect and consistent and being governed by the spirit. But this is your disposition. This is your bent. This is your desire. This is your direction.
This is your mind set is devotion to the things of the spirit of God. That is the true believer that is his bent and you know what Paul says here this paragraph, the Holy Spirit who brought you the spiritual life that conversion will according to this text be the one when your spirit is having been in the presence of God upon death, enjoying the splendor of heaven and now at the resurrection reunited with a glorified body. This text tells us that it is the Holy Spirit who was the one in the power bringing that dust ball back to life.
He says in verse 11. Look there again, but if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who indwells you and that an amazing thought, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was brought about by the power of the Holy Spirit you have in your future as a believer that same power who will bring that mortal body, that is now long decayed your spirit with him. If we have lived and died prior to the rapture. It will be that same spirit in that same power bringing your body back to life. Think of it, your mortal body, that is now brought back to life in reunited with your spirit never died will no longer have any remnants of old flesh longer have the staying upon it no more residue of earth effects of sin will longer be felt in those glorified bodies that we have.
You could think of it this way, Jesus Christ will be the only one in heaven, scars heal before the unbeliever hostile toward creator God, unable to please God, self-centered in his life and arrogant in his death. There's only future death and eternal death and depravity. Everything they live for will be seen for what it was everything they hoped in will be seen for what it cannot do everything they believe then will be seen for how it cannot say in his book bones of contention, written by Prof. Marvin Lubin now I don't have the book I read about the book but it told the story of Sir Arthur Keith and so I pulled the story out of the encyclopedia Reddit fascinating story man was absolutely brilliant. He had earned doctorates in law and science and in medicine he would be knighted by the Empire of Great Britain. He was born in 1866 and died in 1955.
One of the greatest anatomists of the 20th century, according to his own autobiography as a young man he attended evangelistic meetings in Edinburg and Aberdeen and watched students make their commitments to Jesus Christ he wrote. I often felt myself up on the verge of conversion. Yeah, I rejected the gospel because I felt the Genesis account of creation was a myth in the Bible was merely a book of human origin. So this incredibly brilliant man rejected God. The record of Scripture at the height of his career rise as brilliance and his involvement in a number of different fields. In 1908, a discovery was made of some bones. Fragments of the skull of a jawbone.
They were discovered 40 miles from downtown London. Keith became intrigued by the discovery it was soon announced by the London geological Society, that these were the remains of the earliest known Englishmen and they gave him a name I can't pronounce the nickname we all know is the Piltdown man remember him.
The vast majority of paleoanthropologists heralded this discovery as the great discovery of our human ancestry. More than 500 doctoral dissertations would be written exalting the discovery of these bone and what it meant for the evolutionist Sir Arthur Keith became obsessed with these bones.
He became obsessed with this discovery, he wrote more on the Piltdown man than any other living human being his famous book, the antiquity of man was based upon and built upon the veracity and authenticity of the discovery of these fossil but in 1953 science caught up with speculation in the British Museum with advanced techniques proclaimed the entire thing. Fraud scratch marks visible to the naked eye revealed that the sharp teeth had actually been artificially filed down the bones had been treated with iron salts to make them appear old with the jawbone of the fragments of the skull were no older than the year they were found.
Listen to this. Sir Arthur Keith was 83 years old when some of his colleagues went to his home to break the news. Can you imagine that they went to his home to tell him that the fossils he had trusted in for 40 years was a complete hoax bones.
He had been obsessed with convinced that they prove the creator or myth and creation by a creator or myth in a fraud.
Now his own writing were nothing more than myth and speculation. Can you imagine a lifetime of such great faith in the wrong thing. A lifetime of obsession the wrong direction just a matter of months before he died. This venerated old scholar told the truth what are you living for. What are you trusting what are you believing Paul delivers the truth about two dispositions into destinations and I will ask you which one represents.
I couldn't help but think as I studied this week how different the deaths of saints are from the death of people ask her Arthur Keith, the death of God's children, void of disillusionment having confidence in the creator God in their eternal future. I've seen it over and over again. I have stood in hospital rooms with Christian sons and daughters standing at the foot of the bed of the dying father or mother watching with them the chest of their dying loved one up and down with the breath, and finally slowing down and stopping huddling with them in the room, praying tears of sorrow, but confidence in the coming reunion. I have walked into hospital rooms and have been handed lifeless babies prayed with mommies and daddies, tears of great sorrow and yet confidence in God in the coming resurrection. I think of the confidence of one man. A particular my visited on his deathbed. I stood in the hospital room where he lay.
He was a matter of a few hours from glory.
He was my age is heart disease would take his life.
He battled for years. His wife was there. She would sing to him and read to him and he would slip in and out of consciousness. I talked to him whatever he would slip into consciousness and he would slip back out. We had corresponded over the years, and his heart was about ready to give up the fight. As I got ready to go, knowing I probably never see him again. The side of heaven. I leaned over the bed, not even assuming that this moment he could hear me and I said see you later and I never forget he rows stirred and opened his eyes and he smiled with great passion was yes. Well, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through the spirit. Thank God for his Spirit is life giving, life leaning eternally powering, resurrecting Holy Spirit, my friend, if the holy spirit is your friend. You will being friends forever thanks for joining us today. You've been listening to wisdom for the heart with Steve and Dave. You might know what's best for these daily Bible messages that we produce each weekday.
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