Holy Spirit – KINGS WAY TALK

March 11, 2021

Spurgeon Audio: The Sealing of the Spirit

The Spirit of God never takes the place of the Redeemer, he exercises his own peculiar office which is to take of the things of Christ and show them unto us, and not to put his own things in the place of Jesus. The foundation of our hope is laid in Christ from first to last, and if we rest there we are saved. The seal does not always come with faith, but it follows after. I have said this because I am afraid lest in any way whatever you should leave the simple, plain, and solid ground of confidence in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and in that only. Recollect that a man who believes in Jesus Christ is as truly saved when he does not know it as he is when he does know it; he is as truly the Lord’s when he mourns in the valley of humiliation as when he sings on the mountain top of joy and fellowship. Our ground of trust is not to be found in our experience, but in the person and work of our Lord Jesus.
“I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name:
On Christ the solid rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.”
Charles H. Spurgeon, The Sealing of the Spirit, preached at Metropolitan Tabernacle March 19, 1876

There are many things about this sermon that are a true blessing to believers. There is the reminder throughout of the amazing Trinitarian work of salvation. There is the admonishment against seeking after or trusting in experiences over the truth of God’s Word, and the encouragement that we can trust in that Word truly.

And truly, we can know that God is working in our lives, and in this world, through His Spirit blessing and transforming us bit by bit into the image of Christ. We need to remind ourselves of this continually. So often lately I see many people decrying this politician or that law or this cultural trend, and saying “If this continues we’re going to lose…” something important. Lose the country, lose the culture. But do we really think so little of the kingdom of God that we are afraid of the decay of a secular political institution? Or that we have to defend ourselves through that institution?

The Holy Spirit abides in us, and that is a sign and seal of God’s promise to complete the work He began in us. Scripture speaks of this and testifies to this truth, and we can rely on it, even when the world and our experiences are shaking our confidence in other ways. We aren’t going to be able to rest peacefully in this world in the sense that we have no cares, but neither should we be striving in a way that says “I don’t trust that God’s power is enough.” And if I may speak very directly, it is my observation that a lot of Christians, even ones who trot out the term “reformed” to describe themselves, are striving in a way that says exactly that.

Jarod and I are going to talk about that a little bit more on the next Kings Highway Radio. But my encouragement and admonishment to my brothers and sisters of the faith, especially in the West, would be this: when you feel the frustration of watching our civilization move in a direction that is ungodly, are you taking that to the Lord, or are you taking that to comment boxes and angry Twitter rants? When you have neighbors that are not believers, that in fact live in ways contrary to what is godly, are you able to love them, or do you hide from them and allow animosity to grow?

Do you mourn the slow death that the cancer of sin brings on our world, and do you pray for God’s will to be done in transforming hearts? Or are you hardening yourself to those outside your circle?

There’s a lot to think and pray about here. I desire to see God glorified in everything, but most of all I desire to see the grace of God seen clearly. I want us to trust to the work of the Holy Spirit not because of some desire for an experience, or for a moment I can point to and say “this is when God worked in me in such and such a way.” I want us to trust to the work of the Spirit for those times when all the ways of the world press against us, and they will. In that time, I pray we will glorify Jesus as a greater treasure than anything else we could have.

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March 9, 2021

Spurgeon Audio: The Pentecostal Wind and Fire

The preachers of Pentecost told of the Spirit’s work by the Spirit’s power: conversion, repentance, renewal, faith, holiness, and such things were freely spoken of and ascribed to their real author, the divine Spirit. If the Spirit of God shall give us once again a full and fiery ministry we shall hear it clearly proclaimed, “Ye must be born again,” and we shall see a people forthcoming which are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God, and by the energy which cometh from heaven. A Holy Ghost ministry cannot be silent about the Holy Ghost and his sacred operations upon the heart.
Charles H. Spurgeon, The Pentecostal Wind and Fire, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit vol. 27

A word of warning up front: sadly, this episode has some audio issues, ones I wasn’t aware of while recording/streaming. I’ve figured out how to correct them for the future, but with our baby on the way and everything else in life, sadly I don’t have time to re-record the entire thing the way I like. I hope the lesser quality does not detract too badly from the actual content of the sermon.

Today we start a series out of a book I found wonderfully free thanks to my Kindle Unlimited subscription. Granted, the book simply consists of ten Charles Spurgeon sermons, but as they are better-edited than many of the other free collections out there it makes my job of reading it somewhat easier. We will be exploring exactly what the title of the book proclaims: Knowing the Holy Spirit. This is a subject that for many, causes immediate controversy and even defensiveness.

Sadly the work of the Spirit is one that has been abused in multiple ways, both in misunderstanding and denying His role and work, to claiming as work of the Spirit actions that make Him not God, not the promised Comforter, not the one who convicts the world of their need for Christ, but one who stirs crowd up into madness and serves our visceral pleasures.

But today I want to couch this sermon in another context. Over this weekend news came out about the truth behind the apologist Ravi Zacharias, about the sexual immorality and sexual violence he had carried out against so many while he was alive, and about the way that his own ministry turned a blind eye to what He was doing and enabled him. Christianity Today had a long and sad article, and conservative writer David French had an even longer, more personal and more infuriating, which exposed not only the depths to which Zacharias sunk in his sin, but the ways in which victims of his behavior were silenced, treated as liars and frauds.

The lie of power

There is a personal reason for reflecting, one that all Christians ought to consider strongly: I know my own sin. I know the lure of sexual sin in my own life, the scars I’ve cut into my own heart as a result of wicked desires, and the ways I’ve hurt others. I know that putting this to death has involved a work of the Holy Spirit in pouring out merciful conviction on me repeatedly, having to drag things into the light before those closest to me and finding, always waiting, the grace of God and His healing. Because of that I have to be all the more aware of the things that lead me to start desiring these things more than the good things of God, and drag them out quickly. I have to be aware not because I’m going to lose my salvation but because I hate what this sin does in me, does to others, does to my intimacy with God I despise it, and I want to see it dead.

What is clear, is that for Ravi Zacharias this wasn’t happening. He didn’t have people who could hold him accountable – it was clear that his own ministry was enabling him to persist in his behavior, financially and otherwise. And when the first signs of problems appeared, they dealt with it not as a time to confess sin and seek the Lord’s face, but to run a PR play and cover things up. So many Christians were take the statements put out by RZIM on their face because we considered him this stately man who was necessary to fighting the good fight for the faith in our civilization.

I think if there’s one thing I want to get across in talking about the work of the Holy Spirit in this world, it’s that while humans are called to take part in God’s work, we do not make ourselves indispensable. There is no one that can say, “I’m so important to God’s work that He can’t do without me, no matter what I’ve done.” And in the West we have especially bought into the lie that seeking after popularity and power is more important that seeking after holiness, more important than loving well, more important than humility.

I don’t want to ramble here too badly, but I hope that you will join me in praying for our leaders, whether religious, political, or otherwise. Please pray for the idols of your own heart, that they would be brought into the light and destroyed before they can do the kind of damage Ravi’s did. And please pray that humble service, love for God, and love for one another would become the markers of the American church, more than political activism, more than brilliant oration.

January 7, 2020February 8, 2020

Episode 65: The Power of the Holy Ghost

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Let the gospel be preached and the Spirit poured out, and you will see that it has such power to change the conscience, to ameliorate the conduct, to raise the debased, to chastise and to curb the wickedness of the race, that you must glory in it. I say, there is naught like the power of the Spirit. Only let that come, and, indeed, everything can be accomplished.
Charles Spurgeon, sermon no. 30: “The Power of the Holy Ghost”

Just taking a break from the Soul Winner series to visit one of Spurgeon’s earliest sermons, and on a subject that engenders a lot of discussion and confusion. The Holy Spirit is seen in different ways and many Christians struggle with who He is as a person. There is a lot of controversy that’s come from teachings that portray Him as a sort of avenue to God’s power that we can access if we just have enough faith. I’ve written about this kind of thing before, and we’ve talked about it on Kings Highway Radio.

Such teachings do not glorify God, but diminish Him. The Holy Spirit glorifies Christ, and convicts the world about Him. Dare we to assign him the post of genie, or of a faint and distant voice? The Spirit burns in the hearts of the people of Christ, driving them forward, urging them to serve and love and walk in faith. This is no small thing, but it is the sign of new life in Christ.

Visit spurgeonaudio.org and theologymix.com for more great content.

September 1, 2019February 8, 2020

Episode 60: Spiritual Revival, the Need of the Church

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Christians will sometimes lose the realization of Jesus. The connection between themselves and Christ will be, at times, severed as to their own conscious enjoyment of it, but they will always groan and cry when they lose that Presence. What? Is Christ your Brother and does He live in your house and yet you have not spoken to Him for a month? I hear there is little love between you and your Brother if you have had no conversation with Him for so long.
Charles Spurgeon, sermon 2598, “Spiritual Revival, the Need of the Church”

Just one more episode after this and our series on unity in Christ for the church will be finished. Certainly, this sermon of Spurgeon’s has perhaps more…directness to it. In our day and age, a preacher going up and basically putting a finger directly in the face of his audience and delivering a message a la the prophet Nathan saying to David, “You are the man!” is not going to win that preacher very many friends.

But that points, in many ways, directly to the issue of our day that this century-old sermon still speaks to. The title itself draws out the comparison between a faithful pursuit of Christ and what is seen in many churches–after all, what is a “revival” in many places but a period, however long, where the faith is turned into a grand entertainment and distraction? How often is the concept of “revival” equated, not with life given by the Holy Spirit to live life in Christ, but with brief seasons of great emotion?

But what Charles Spurgeon points to in his sermon is a reminder that the kind of spiritual revival needed in all of us, the kind that God’s people need to call for, is not emotional excitement, though it may and often can contain that. It shouldn’t end with that, however. The kind of revival he is calling us to seek after is the kind that requires everything that we’ve talked about in the previous episodes. The revival is not an upswelling of feeling, but a trusting of our day to day life to a strength that is not our own. And it requires a unity in the body that is not static or intellectual by any means, but is constantly moving even as it rests fully in Christ. I am talking about unity in striving after holiness.