The Triune God - The Work Of The Holy Spirit Series

Essential Truths: The Triune God - The Holy Spirit: Sanctifier & Giver of Fruit and Gifts – March 24, 2019

I really wish it weren’t true, but I’m pourous. I’m made of clay. I’m breakable, leaky and I fade. I get depleted.

Can you relate? I don’t mean relate to ME being these, things. I mean all of us. Me and you included. It’s a thing that goes along with being human.

2 Cor 4:16 says: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all”.

It’s easy to lose heart, especially if you focus on the first true statement only. “Outwardly we are wasting away”.

That is our natural state. We’re born, we grow up. As soon as we’re fully grown up we start to fade. The evidence for this accumulates slowly but steadily.

Before I hit a quarter century I could literally eat any amount of food, and I would not gain weight.

All of the sudden, I turn 25, get married, and my toes start to disappear in the shower.

My son Jared is 27. He’s feeling the effects of no longer being 18.

Sooner than we’d like to admit, outwardly there is this thing that happens to our body called decay. We age.

It’s easy to lose heart, if all we have is the first statement: “We are wasting away”.

That’s all you have if you have no faith. You have this material world.

You have this material body. And you have your internet memes to help you remember: “Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order”

It’s easy to lose heart without faith. But in God’s economy, in this Scripture, there’s a part 2: “Inwardly we are being renewed day by day”.

If you’re being renewed every day, what does that imply. There’s a need for renewal.

Hope fades, your bucket leaks, encouragement goes flat.

John Piper says: “You wouldn’t need to be renewed day by day, if you could run your car on yesterday’s gas, if your metabolism could function on yesterday’s meal, or if the pain in your head can be relieved on yesterday’s dosage. You can’t run today’s life on yesterday’s newness”.

So we are being renewed. And in that day-by-day renewal we are also being sanctified.

And even as that renewal happens slowly but consistently because God is faithful, we are also being made holy, We are being made pure on the inside. We are being made to be like Jesus.

This is what the Bible means when it talks about a word we hardly otherwise ever hear in life: Sanctification.

I love blueletterbible.org because you can easily find out the meaning of any given passage of Scripture in the original language,

whether it’s the Old Testament in Hebrew or the New Testament in Ancient or Koine Greek.

The orignal word in the Greek there for ‘renew’ Ä-nä-ki-no'-o (a-nie-ka-na-o) means “to be changed into a new kind of life as opposed to the former corrupt state”.

This is a good way of describing the way that the Holy Spirit transforms our lives after we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour.

Peter, in his opening paragraph in 1 Peter 1 says this: To God’s elect...who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Peter is writing to “God’s elect”, who are those of us who have been called to believe in Jesus through the foreknowledge of God.

So God knew we would respond favourably to the gospel and that the gospel would take deep root in us and produce fruit.

How would the gospel do that? Through the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work in our lives. Through the life of Jesus manifesting itself in our lives, by the grace of God.

What does that look like? What does the Holy Spirit’s work of transforming us to be more like Jesus look like

Galatians 5: 9 talks about the Fruit of the Spirit. 1st Corinthians, Romans and Ephesians all speak about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Today we are going to look at both.

We are going to look at both, because they cannot be separated. If we do separate them, we run into trouble.

if we focus only on the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is to do with the development of Christ-like

character,

we can actually become overly focussed on our character, how it may reflect or not reflect the character of Jesus.