Lesson 179

Turn to page 47 we’ll go on where we left off last time. Remember we are dealing with the giving of the life, the human life through the eternal life that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. We went over the life of Christ through the doctrine of kenosis and impeccability, and we made the two points that kenosis is just the doctrine of Philippians, and impeccability is the fact of the sinlessness of Jesus Christ. Then we went on to say that in our events that we’ve been working on, we’ve been talking about the fact that Christ ascended, so we have the ascension and the ascension of Jesus places Him at the Father’s right hand, which is the first time in history that a member of the human race has occupied and been able to sit at the right hand of the Father because Jesus Christ was fully qualified to ascend to this position. We call that the ascension and session.

The next event that we looked at is Pentecost, because Pentecost followed that, and when Jesus Christ went to the Father’s right hand, it says, “Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise which is the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear,” Acts 2:33. So He’s poured this out, which is the coming of the Holy Spirit to earth. The Holy Spirit is omniscient, so let’s think about something here right away and go back to the basic basics. God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is loving, He is omniscient, He is omnipresent, He is omnipotent, immutable and eternal, and a number of other attributes. But the point is that if God is omnipresent, and the Holy Spirit is God, in what sense then did He come to earth? He came to earth in the sense that His primary site of operations is located on earth in a way it wasn’t before Pentecost.

Maybe you could make an analogy of imagining a very powerful man in a corporation, the owner, the CEO or something, it’s private, it’s not a public corporation, it’s a private firm and he owns it all. You could say his ownership is on every desk, every room, the parking lot, the building. But he has his desk area where he does his work, and that’s his office. In the same way the Holy Spirit who is omnipresent, who is everywhere, always was everywhere, always was on earth, moves His desk, so to speak, or His center of operations to the earth. That’s what goes on here at Pentecost.

We’ve been working with this and out of this act comes at least, we said four things, actually I’ve enlarged it so that if you look on page 46, “Now we will look at four doctrines about our relationship to Jesus Christ through the post-Pentecostal work of the Holy Spirit.” It should be six; we’re going to go through six doctrines. I’m doing that because it’s really necessary to see the work that the Holy Spirit does so we don’t get caught up in counterfeit things that may be popular but aren’t really justified in the Word of God. So that’s why we’re going through the work of the Holy Spirit. When we get into the next chapter and we deal with the next event which is the separation of the Church from Israel, we’re going to deal with six things that Jesus Christ does and we’re going to deal with six things that the Father does. When we get done we’ll have eighteen different things that describe our status as believers in this dispensation. So we have eighteen different things, and when it says “count your blessings one by one,” now at least you can count to eighteen, because we’ll go through these. All of them are expounded in Scripture. There are many more, this is just a sampling, but at least it gives you something to go back to.

The way to remember this is for now, we’re just going to deal with four, and the easy thing to do is remember RIBS, the first letter, R stands for regeneration. On page 46 that’s the doctrine, regeneration. What does it mean? It means the life that is given, it means that Jesus Christ regenerates the person at the point of belief, and this regeneration… here’s the person and before they become a Christian we have the flesh, we have the sin nature, we can tie those two together, we have a body that’s cursed, and we have a spirit that is dead. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but it means that it just doesn’t function the right way. At the point of regeneration what happens is that in a miraculous way, the Holy Spirit recreates the human spirit, in some form or fashion. So the image in your mind that you want to have for regeneration, the image, is Gen. 1, it’s creation. Just like God made the light shine in darkness there on the first day, if you can think of that imagery it will help you visualize what regeneration is.

Regeneration is remarkable in a number of respects in that it gives a quality of life; it’s something that depends upon Genesis 1 kinds. Remember when we were talking about Gen. 1, He made everything to reproduce after its kind, and we said this is not an optional interpretation, because if you wind up not affirming solidly that when God created He created this, He created this, He created this, and not something that transitions and mooches around, like in the theory of evolution where you have that transmutation of the species. In the New Testament there are two species in the human race: two, not one. Spiritually there are those in Adam and then there are those in the Second Adam, so Adam one and Adam two. No one can be part of Adam two unless they’re regenerate. The regeneration is the recreation of the human spirit utilizing in some connection the life of Jesus Christ. So it’s a linkage that happens here and it couldn’t have happened until Jesus Christ finished His earthly ministry, ascended and seated at the Father’s right hand, and then this begins regeneration.

The life that is given at the point of regeneration, if it’s Christ’ life, then it’s impeccable. So that’s why we have these strange passages in the Bible, and this class is not a class in exegesis, but on page 48 that’s what I’ve been trying to deal with 1 John 3, whether it’s Romans 7, whether it’s Gal. 2:20, all those passages are very, very difficult verses to handle because it’s easy to infer that what they’re saying is perfectionism and that’s not what’s being taught. What’s being taught is that the regenerate nature comes from Jesus, and the regenerate nature is sinless, sinlessly perfect. What other conclusion could we come to? That the eternal life of Jesus that is recreated in our souls is sinful? That’s why you can’t just kiss off these verses, they are there, they demand study and they demand explanation.

In the middle of page 48 I have a quote from Professor Hodges, who for many years taught New Testament Greek at Dallas Seminary. I think this is a very good comment. Follow with me and we’ll go through this one more time. He’s talking about Rom. 7 because Rom. 7 is parallel to 1 John 3. In Rom. 7 remember Paul says that “it is no longer I that sins, but sin that dwells in me.” That’s a very difficult verse to handle, frankly, if you think about it. I don’t sin, but it’s sin that dwells in me. See, there’s a complexity to the human soul that we probably don’t fully appreciate. And passages like this stress this nature of the soul. So Hodges points out, (quote):

“Here the Apostle achieves a self-perspective” and I think that’s the easiest way of handling this, it is a perspective, a way of looking. He “achieves a self-perspective in which he can at once admit that he sins and yet still say that ‘it is no longer I that do it.’ His true self (‘I myself,’ verse 25) serves God’s law, even while he confesses that ‘with the flesh’ he serves the law of sin.” See, there’s a bifurcation inside of him. The next paragraph is very important for later on. This is a good insight. “It is of great importance that this form of self-analysis precedes,” precedes, “precedes the solution to his problem that is given in Romans 8.” This is the important sentence. “To view sin as intrinsically foreign to what we are as regenerate people in Christ is to take the first step toward spiritual victory over it.” That it is now foreign to us by virtue of regeneration.

In other words, because the human spirit has been created, because at the moment we trust in Christ we are in Adam two, transferred from Adam one to Adam two, that means now with this regenerate nature the flesh doesn’t belong to that. It’s to be distinguished, it’s not part of the core of our being any longer; not because we’ve done anything, it’s only because Jesus Christ has created anew this human spirit. It’s also something that’s done, not only is there two species here, but it’s done instantaneously. We said the imagery of Genesis 1, in the Genesis 1 how long does it take God to speak the universe into existence. Psalm 33 tells us, He spoke and it stood fast. So it’s an instantaneous thing that happens. Now there may be months, years, of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts to bring us to that point when we trust in Christ. But at the moment that regeneration occurs, it’s a split second and it happens. And it’s a work that is a miracle. Today people say oh there’s no miracles; every time someone is regenerated it’s a miracle. It’s a creation miracle that’s instantaneous, and recapitulates on a far more grand scale than anything in Genesis 1. So that’s important about regeneration.

On page 49 I’ve got the sequence and I want to go over that sequence. Turn to John 17:3, because we’re going to finish up regeneration and move on. In John 17:3 is a description of eternal life. “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee,” addressed to the Father, “that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” Now if eternal life is defined as knowing and knowing here is a relationship type knowing, if that’s the case, then it’s arguing that knowing, associated with eternal life, is one of the manifestations of regeneration. In other words, why does God regenerate? He regenerates that we may know the Father and know the Son. It seems that it’s essential to that relationship with God through Jesus Christ, meaning that no human religion, no set of religious works, church membership, baptism, all the other things people quote about got to do this, go to do that, got to repent, be a good boy, make promises, dedicate your life and all the rest of the stuff, which is fruit, maybe, I’m not arguing that but that’s not regeneration. Regeneration is a miraculous work the Holy Spirit does and that is what opens up the relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s not established because of our good works, it’s not because we’re good boys and girls, it’s only because of regeneration that that happens. That’s why we have to be thankful. Whatever we have that’s worthwhile has been given to us through the Lord Jesus Christ.

On page 49 what we tried to do is tie chapter 1 and chapter 2 together. We said there are two events that we’ve studied so far, the ascension and Pentecost. The diagram is simply pointing this out; the ascended Lord Jesus Christ has proven righteousness. What do I mean by “proven righteousness?” He lived a perfect life under trial, under pressure, and He succeeded in obeying the Father at every point. Never was there a disobedient act. He vanquished satanic temptation completely and perfectly. So it’s “proven righteousness.” He ascends to heaven, and that is chapter 1, “The heavenly origin of the Church.” See, we’re dealing with the origin of the Church and the destiny of the Church this year. So the first line gives you the heavenly source of the origin of the Church. The Church originated with the ascension and session of Christ in so far as heaven is concerned.

On earth, from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ sends the Holy Spirit to regenerate, and that’s the earthly origin of the Church. We’ll press that point further as we go on. That yields Church Age believers who possess the eternal life of Jesus Christ. Notice in the diagram figure 3. That couldn’t have happened in the Old Testament because in the Old Testament the Lord Jesus Christ wasn’t risen, there was no proven righteousness. Were there believers in the Old Testament? Of course there were believers in the Old Testament. Were they saved by faith? Of course they were saved by faith. Was the object of their faith the promises of God? Of course they were. Were they saved basically the same way? Yes, they were saved the same way. Well then what’s different? What’s different is their relationship with God is different than the relationship with believers in this dispensation. Clearly we are related by regeneration by His Holy Spirit sent from an ascended Christ, which can’t be true of Abraham, David, and the others. They lived anticipating that, maybe they were conscious of it, maybe they weren’t; whatever salvation blessings they enjoyed were based on an anticipation of the finished work of Christ. It was Christ-centered in the Old Testament that way. But the details of the relationship are unique to the Church Age.

Under figure 3, if you follow the text, “This side of eternity two dominions now exist: the old dominion given to First Adam at creation but lost to Satan at the fall; and the new dominion given to the Second Adam at His ascension and session. The new nature thus forms part of the New Universe which has already begun in the Person of the resurrected, ascended, and seated Christ. As such, eternal life means for the Church Age believer that he knows God in Christ as the final step of progressive revelation about God’s character.” Yes, there’s going to be more things revealed about God in the future, about His plans, about His details, but we have come to a crux in history with Pentecost because now the world knows that sin has been paid for. No matter what all the glorious things are that God is yet to reveal, they will be add-ons to this fundamental truth that Jesus Christ succeeded in securing salvation, that Jesus Christ succeeded in being the perfect human being. And as such He becomes the author of this new humanity through regeneration.

One other thing to notice about figure 3 and one of the reasons I put it there is you notice there’s a sequence from the Son to the Holy Spirit. Remember we said in the doctrine of the Trinity it’s the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Son was begotten of the Father, the theologians use the word “begotten,” it doesn’t mean he started at a point in time, there was a time when the Son wasn’t there and then He got begotten and He was there. That’s not what they mean. The word “begotten” when dealing with the Trinity is the idea of derivation in the sense that you have electricity going into the filament of a bulb and you have light coming out of the bulb. It’s instantaneous and simultaneous but in the logical sense the light follows from the electricity going into the filament. The Son, in that sense, is derivative of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is derivative of the Son, and you observe this sequence. We’ll see this several times, that the intra-triune sequence is always there, from Father to Son to Holy Spirit.

On page 50 we’re going to start a new thing. We’re going to leave regeneration and we’re going to move to indwelling, “I” in RIBS. If the image of regeneration is Gen. 1 is creation; the image of indwelling is that of a temple. Turn to 1 Kings 8, when Solomon made the temple; let’s note some things to get our picture right. Solomon built this building, he brought the ark in and chapter 8 is the story about what happened when the ark was placed in the temple. Verse 9, “There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, where the LORD made a covenant with the sons of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt. [10] And it came about when the priests came from the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the LORD.” What do we mean “cloud filled the house of the Lord.” What cloud? The cloud that goes back to what event? Previous to this, when was the cloud most manifest in the history of Israel? At the Exodus, remember, the tabernacle, the cloud, every where the pillar of fire went they went. It was a physical thing; it was a physical manifestation of the presence of God.

It says after Solomon built the building and they brought the ark into the building, according to verse 11, the glory filled the house. [11, “so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.”] So now the temple is filled with the indwelling of God. Verse 12, “Then Solomon said, ‘The LORD has said that He would dwell in the thick cloud. [13] I have surely built Thee a lofty house, a place for Thy dwelling forever.’” The dwelling is in the temple. It goes on to describe this. In verse 22, “Then Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the assembly of Israel and spread out his hands toward heaven.” Now watch this, this is the wisest man who ever lived. Solomon had an intellect that was in a super genius level. He was greater than Leonardo DaVinci; he was a Renaissance man in everything. Here he’s describing the nature of God Himself and he’s dealing with the same problem I introduced the lesson with, how can you say God is localized at a point in space when He is an omnipresent God, present at every point in space? So we want to look at this a little just to feed our imagination, our mind’s eye, to get set up with the proper Biblical category to understand indwelling. In verse 22, “Then Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD…”

Verse 23, “And he said, ‘O LORD, the God of Israel, there is no God like Thee in heaven above or on earth beneath, who art keeping covenant and showing lovingkindness to Thy servants who walk before Thee with all their heart. [24] Who hast kept with Thy servant, my father David, that which Thou hast promised him;” what covenant is he referring to? Remember the Biblical covenants, the Sinaitic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant before that one, after that one the Davidic Covenant. Remember what the Davidic Covenant promised? The dynasty of David would endure forever on the throne of Israel. So in verse 24 he’s talking about the dynasty promise, he’s not talking about some abstract, it’s something that can be felt, touched, measured and verified. “…indeed, Thou hast spoken with Thy mouth and hast fulfilled it with Thy hand as it is this day. [25] “Now, therefore, O LORD, the God of Israel, keep with Thy servant David, my father, that which Thou hast promised him, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your sons take heed to their way to walk before Me as you have walked.’”

Verse 27, now Solomon deals with a conceptual issue of God indwelling a temple. “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Thee, how much less this house which I have built! [28] Yet” now watch what he does. I used the illustration of the CEO and the desk, that’s the center of his operations. Look at verse 28, “Yet have regard to the prayer of Thy servant and to his supplication, O LORD my God, to listen to the cry and to the prayer which Thy servant prays before Thee today; [29] that Thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, toward the place of which Thou hast said, ‘My name shall be there,’ to listen to the prayer which Thy servant shall pray toward this place. [30] And listen to the supplication of Thy servant and to Thy people Israel, when they pray toward this place; hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling place; hear and forgive.” He clearly knows, verse 30, he’s clearly acknowledging that even though the Shekinah glory is dwelling in the house, verse 11, even though God in one sense indwells the temple, he hasn’t denied thereby God’s omnipresence, nor has he denied that the real throne is still in heaven. So there’s a little bit of a tension here when we come to this concept of indwelling. Let’s work this out a little bit.

Indwelling does not mean canceling omnipresence. It doesn’t mean that that attribute goes away. It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have a special place, a special place in heaven, we’re not denying that either. Well if it’s not denying those two things, what is it affirming? One of the things it’s affirming in verse 11, verse 12, that some part of God’s glory is localized in the temple. So positively it’s affirming that there’s a location of a meeting place, so to speak, between man and God. Of course, God can meet us anywhere, but there’s a specialty about whatever the indwelling temple is about. That’s the Old Testament temple.

On page 50 there’s a bunch of other verses if you want to look them up. Follow with me, “Before the Solomonic Temple, of course, God’s glory indwelled the Tabernacle.” Exodus 40:34 is the place you can see where that indwelling happened. “God’s indwelling the Tabernacle and later the Temple enabled communication between Himself and Israel.” If it’s communication, because remember Solomon is talking about prayer, the location of the meeting place, what do we mean by communication and meeting place? Next sentence. “It was the place where blood atonement occurred,” remember what they do in the temple? What they’d do with the sacrifices? They sacrificed them there? That was the location of sacrifice. It was “where washing was performed,” now all these have a little connotation to them, and we’re going to see later, I’ll tip you off to this sentence, you see the sentence we’re going through now, if you’ll underline “blood atonement,” that’s number one. The temple was the place where blood atonement occurred. Now if you think about it, what does the epistle to the Hebrews say of us about a filthy conscience is cleansed by the blood of Christ. Where does that happen? The blood is applied; the blood was sacrificed outside of Jerusalem on the cross but the effect of that is applied inside our souls where this indwelling happens. So in a sense there’s something that corresponds to that atoning work internally.

Notice the second clause in the sentence, “where washing was performed,” before someone could come into the temple they had to wash. We’re going to find out, 1 John, we have to confess our sins. Jesus said whoever, you know, does not take a bath is not part of me, Peter said… so the washing occurs with our confession, which occurs in our soul. “…where incense burned,” incense, the third thing, is a picture of prayer. Where does that happen? It happens at the meeting place with God and where’s the meeting place with God in the Church Age? It’s inside, where regeneration has happened. “…and where His light shown.” Remember His light shone in the temple. Where does illumination to the Word of God happen? In the human heart. So the four functions that you see in that sentence, the blood atonement occurs, washing is performed, incense is burned, and His light is shown. Those are all part of this meeting place between God and man.

In the New Universe, when God dwells, there’s going to be a river coming out from the throne, Rev. 21 and that’s a picture of Eden. In Eden they didn’t need a temple per se, before the fall, didn’t need washing, didn’t need blood atonement, but they did need to meet with God. And where did they meet with God? In the Garden of Eden. So there’s always a localized meeting place, whether it’s Eden, whether it’s an altar, whether it’s the Tabernacle, whether it’s the Temple, and now the Church Age, after the Temple is destroyed, where is the meeting place with God? In this age the meeting place between God and man is in the regenerate nature. That’s His own temple. Solomon built the temple, the Holy Spirit indwelt it. Jesus Christ today regenerates, and what comes to indwell the regenerate nature? The Holy Spirit. So regeneration provides the faculty or the entity inside of us, and then the Holy Spirit indwells that.

The last sentence, middle paragraph, page 53, that’s what we mean when we say “the proper relationship between the two may be expressed by saying that regeneration provides the vessel for the indwelling Spirit of God,” just as Solomon supplied the Temple that was later indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Now comes a little clarification, because we’ve clearly got something going here that doesn’t quite match the Old Testament and this last sentence of the last paragraph deals with that.

We’ll look at some of the verses but just follow the text; we’ll go to the verses in a minute. “The indwelling of the Spirit after Pentecost differs from His indwelling during the age of Israel.” Just like regeneration, we had a corresponding thing, circumcision of the heart which we’ll get into in a minute. “Table Five lists the dispensational distinctions observed in the Biblical record.” On page 51 you’ll see a chart. The chart is divided in half, on the left side you see the Pre-Pentecostal Indwelling. On the right side you see Post-Pentecostal Indwelling. So you have a changeover that occurs. Here’s Pentecost, this is Pre-Pentecost, this is Post-Pentecost; things here, things here, but they’re different. What was the difference? I’ve summarized some of them. Notice the first row in table 5. What was the focus of the indwelling in the Old Testament? The focus was to “further the purpose of God for the nation Israel.” That was the purpose of the indwelling, to “further the purpose of God for the nation Israel.” We’ll give illustrations of that in a moment.

Pre-Pentecostal Indwelling Post-Pentecostal Indwelling

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“job-centered” ministry to further the “life-centered” ministry to make eternal fellowship

purpose of God for the nation Israel with God a present reality (John 16:13-15)

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limited to only some believers (and universal for all and only believers (Rom. 8:9;

possibly unbelievers Jude 1:11

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could be asked for (2 Kings 2:9; Luke 11:13) automatic (No NT command to seek indwelling

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Table 5. Summary of pre- and post-Pentecostal Spirit indwelling

On the right side of the table, what is the purpose of the indwelling Holy Spirit on this side of Pentecost? It says a “life-centered” ministry to make eternal fellowship with God a present reality. That’s what the Holy Spirit is here for. The Holy Spirit now is more “life-centered” on individual believers, whereas in the Old Testament He worked with individuals but the goal was the nation Israel. You might add to that right side it’s really to build the Church, the body of Christ.

The second row on table five, the indwelling in the Old Testament was limited to only some believers, and there are even passages that suggest that He could have indwelt unbelievers. The Holy Spirit worked through an ass, Baalim’s. The Holy Spirit has freedom to do these kind of odd things, but generally speaking it was only limited to some believers, it was not universal. Right side, second row, it’s “universal for all and only believers.” Go to Rom. 8:9, I want to make this point. In the 20^th century there’s been some sloppy theology about this and you might have heard somebody get up, all excited, waving hands, yelling and going on and someone says there’s a real man of God, the Holy Spirit indwells him. Like the Holy Spirit doesn’t indwell every Christian? Rom. 8:9, “However you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” But now notice, “But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” So indwelling is coterminous with salvation. You don’t have somebody saved without the indwelling Holy Spirit. It’s not salvation and you do 152 different good works and then you get to earn the indwelling. The indwelling is there from the beginning of the Christian life; it’s important to see that that’s different. In the New Testament, this side of Pentecost it’s universal, the other side of Pentecost it is limited.

Next row, it was temporary, it could be removed, the Holy Spirit could remove Himself from them. Psalm 51:11, here’s the prayer, and often times because the liturgy…, I used to attend years ago a liturgical church, and there’s nothing wrong with liturgy as long as the liturgy is designed… a lot of the liturgies are designed with far more theology in them than the present churches who are liturgical preach in the pulpits; the liturgy beats the sermons. David, in his penitential Psalm, the crisis, while he was king, the Holy Spirit indwells him as king, and in verse 11, part of his confession is this: “Do not cast me away from Thy presence, and do not take Thy Holy Spirit from me.” If you notice, it’s poetry and it’s parallelism. The first part of verse 11 is parallel to the second part of verse 11, so before we go too far let’s note the parallel. What did we say the image of indwelling is? The temple. What’s the purpose of the temple? Communication.

What is verse 11 saying? “Do not cast me away from Thy presence,” and then simultaneously and coterminous with that, “and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.” So what David is praying is that when God punishes him, chastens him for his sin, that including in the chastening not be a taking away of the Holy Spirit. But it meant more than just “from Thy presence” because we know in the context of 1 and 2 Samuel, what did it mean when it said “the Spirit came upon” Saul? The Spirit left Saul and came upon David. What was happening politically with this? In other words, the indwelling of the kings in the Old Testament signified the dynastic right of his family. So in effect what David is praying in verse 11 is also that his dynasty continue, that he not be like Saul where the Holy Spirit did leave Saul. David says please don’t take the Holy Spirit from me, not only because of Your presence, but because of the preservation of my family as sitting on this throne. I point that out, we don’t have time to develop it but I assure you it’s there in 1 and 2 Samuel, because this shows you that in the Old Testament indwelling has a special connotation, and one of the connotations it had with regard to David was dynastic succession. But it was temporary; obviously David thought it was temporary because he’s praying that it not be taken away.

Turn to Eph. 4:30, we’re going to get into another doctrine, sealing, but we’ll anticipate a little bit. In the New Testament, this side of Pentecost, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Not only is the Holy Spirit universal to every believer, the Holy Spirit is a seal, He never leaves till the day of redemption. He can’t leave and it’s permanent. So the other contrast between pre and post-Pentecost is one side it was temporary and on the other side it’s permanent.

The fourth row, right side, “it could be asked for,” one could make the indwelling of the Holy Spirit a petition to God. In Luke 11:13 it is, “How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to them who ask Him.” And some Christians will go ahead and pray that. What’s the problem? Luke 11 occurs before Pentecost, Pentecost hasn’t come in Luke. You’ve got to read the Gospels as pre-Pentecost. This is the life of the Holy Spirit under the Old Testament dispensation that hadn’t finished yet when the four Gospels are recording history. After Pentecost comes and after the Church forms, now there’s no New Testament command for indwelling whatsoever, in the entire New Testament. It’s gone. The reason—because you don’t have to ask for it, it comes with regeneration, it’s part of this RIBS thing.

As an example of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, I list verses in the second paragraph on page 51, I want to show you some instances of how the Holy Spirit worked in the age of Israel. “In pre-Pentecostal times, Israel consisted of a mixed multitude of believers and unbelievers. The kind of indwelling which occurred, therefore, was primarily to aid the mixed nation in fulfilling its historic calling rather than to bring everyone into immediate, individual, eternal fellowship with God. Builders of the Tabernacle and the Temple were indwelt for natural skills,” underline the word “natural,” “natural skills to produce those structures.” What was one of the skills they had? Carpentry, carpenters were gifted by the Holy Spirit so that the Tabernacle would be made right. See what the difference is there? Those are natural skills that were supernaturally given to craftsmen in order that this physical Temple and Tabernacle be made correctly.

Next sentence, “Israel’s judges were indwelt at times for special acts of political and military deliverance,” there’s a whole series of references in the book of Judges, “the spirit came upon” so and so. What does that mean? What was so and so doing when the Spirit of God came upon him? The spirit would come upon… [blank spot] … that’s the kind of ministry. So if you start listing the last four lines in that paragraph, carpentry, that was part of the object of the Holy Spirit, political leadership, battle field skills in military science, and making a donkey talk. That was what the Holy Spirit indwelling was all about. I’ve summarized already about David and the dynastic thing. Therefore, there’s a difference.

Indwelling in the New Testament means something other than what it meant in the Old Testament. Page 52, “the Spirit now indwells permanently, not temporarily (Eph. 4:30). No Christian who knows the doctrine of indwelling can ever pray the prayer of David in Psalm 51:11 or the disciples’ prayer in Luke 11:13.” That doesn’t mean that you can’t pray prayers that are very analogous to that. Of course we can confess our sin; of course we can ask God for blessing. But one of the blessings we don’t have to ask for this side of Pentecost is the indwelling Holy Spirit because He’s already here.

“As we have seen, God indwells temples.” Turn to 1 Cor. 3 because Paul uses this temple imagery again, associated with indwelling. Here’s another New Testament epistle and here’s a verse that talks about the indwelling. He mentions the temple analogy two ways. We’re going to look at the two ways Paul uses the temple imagery. The first time he uses it is 1 Cor. 3:16, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Was Corinth a particularly advanced, highly spiritual church? I don’t think so, these people couldn’t get resurrection straight, they were getting drunk in communion, they were so out of it that God had to discipline some of them by killing them after communion service. So this is not a highly spiritual church, and yet he has the audacity to make a claim that frankly a lot of evangelical Christians get upset with Paul saying this. How can you call such a carnal church a place where God dwells, I don’t think you’re very perceptive, I don’t think you’ve got the gift of discernment.

What does the text say, he’s not talking to the Galatians here, he’s talking to the Corinthians, and he says “you,” plural, “a temple,” now what does temple mean? Meaning number one, in 1 Cor. 3 it equals the local church. You all are a temple. Is it talking about a building? No, the building is the place where the temple meets, but the temple isn’t the building. We don’t into the house of God, the Church is the house of God. If we have forty-four people who are believers in one place that’s a forty-four brick temple right there. So here’s a case where Paul is saying… and then he says, by the way, verse 17, “If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.” What does he mean “destroy the temple.” If you look back up in verses 10, 11, 12, 13, he’s talking about the works of the flesh, things that are just useless as far as the temple is concerned, and he says these can be deleterious, these can be offensive, these can undermine the Church, but “if any man destroys the temple of God,” God’s going to destroy him. God’s going to protect His Church.

I think it was in World Magazine, the last issue, a fascinating observation about a little unknown event that happened in Afghanistan. As you know, on the TV and radio now they’re concerned with trying to rebuild this mess and one of the magnets to try to get all these tribes together is the king that had abdicated years and years ago. They want to bring the King back so they can get them all together and say hey guys, can you agree at least that this good man could kind of hold us together here at the center. What the newspapers haven’t told us is the circumstances under which he abdicated. Back many, many years ago before this man abdicated as king, there was a missionary by the name of Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Wilson led a lot of Afghan people to Jesus Christ along with some State Department people, etc. in Kabul. So they had to have a church; they wanted a church started. Even back then there was a general Muslim population and then there were a few of these fanatics, people in now the Taliban, and they hated the Christians. The poor Afghans that converted out of Islam had a real problem, and they had to meet surreptitiously along with the Christians who happened to be there with our Consulate in Kabul.

They formed a church and this thing started spreading. Afghans in Kabul really started becoming Christians. This really frosted the Muslims; they had to do something about it. When Wilson went out and said hey, can we build a church. The Muslims can build mosques in America but Christians can’t build church buildings in Islamic lands. This is the other side of this little coin, the sword only cuts one way. They were not allowed to build a church. Wilson realized, at the time Eisenhower was President, this was years back, in the 50’s, Eisenhower had just dedicated the first mosque in D.C. and it was a ceremonial thing, ha-ha, we’re free in America and give everybody rights. Eisenhower made the proper political clucking noises for this ceremony thing. Wilson heard about it and he said ah, Eisenhower is going to come over and visit the king. So he somehow got word to Eisenhower’s pastor, would you kind of ask the President when he comes over to Kabul, would you have him kind of lean on the king here a little bit and say hey, you know we let a mosque be built in D.C., how about you guys letting a church building be built in Kabul. Good idea said Eisenhower. So Eisenhower goes over there and he talks to the king and says you know, there’s Christians here and they’d kind of like a church building where they can meet, do you have a problem with that? The guy said no, we’ll go ahead; the king agreed to do it.

So they built the church building. Three years later, by this time the Moslem fanatics are really ticked that this thing is growing, got to stop this, can’t have this in a Muslim land, so they decide to compel the king to agree to destroy the building. By the way, they hear there’s going to be an “underground” church developing around this building, so they come in with bulldozers, knock the building down and start digging twelve feet down because they think there’s an underground church, I mean, these people are kind of slow. But they go in and they destroy this thing. And what do the Christians do? Interesting lesson, the Christians obviously can’t be in the building when it’s being destroyed, so the Christians all back out, form a ring around the building, bow in prayer, and between their prayers they even offer tea, water and cookies to the soldiers that are guarding the bulldozers that are destroying the church. But all the time they’re praying. Within hours from the time they started praying the king was overthrown.

What does it say? It says here “if any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him,” mess around with the church and you may be successful for a while, but you’re going to be taken out of history. I think you’re going to see this because two of the great regimes that have crushed the Christians in the Middle East, one of them is Saudi Arabia and the other one is Iraq and Iran. Watch what happens to those governments. As long as there are Christians praying; these are Christians who took a prayerful stand, nonviolent, didn’t fight them; “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal,” they’re spiritual. But within hours those prayers were answered and that regime fell. The question is maybe Humpty Dumpty fell and they can’t bring all the pieces back together again because of a spiritual problem. We don’t know this.

History is loaded with all these little spiritual background stories which, when we get to heaven someday it’s going to be fascinating to have God take us all through the acts of history that we learned in high school and college and we learned all about the dates and the angels who are probably going to be our history teachers are going to say hey, do you want to know what really happened in this year, this year, this year? Want to know what really happened in 1776? Do you want to know what really happened in World War I? What a fascinating story that will be. Talk about the other dimension to history.

Paul, in 1 Cor. 3 is talking about the church as a temple, and we want to conclude with the second meaning of the word “temple” here. Turn to 1 Cor. 6:19, now he’s talking about the individual, the individual body, he’s not talking about the body of the Church, he’s talking about the individual “body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you,” and there he’s talking about an individual believer. Imbedded in all that is that’s why the body, even though it’s cursed, even though it’s on its way out through the death process, the body is considered to be important in the Bible. We’re not just a spirit, we’re also a body, and there’s a certain respect for the body that is implicit in looking at it as a temple. You know, you clean it, you take care of it, somebody cleans the temple, and there’s a certain theology which we won’t have time to go into, but as far as taking care of yourself, health wise and other wise, it’s not unspiritual to do that because this is part of the temple, this is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit thinks enough of the body to be using it for His purposes, so maybe we ought to pay a little more attention sometimes than we do.

Follow me in the rest of these paragraphs on page 52 I’ll finish up this section on indwelling so we can get to baptism next time. “As we have seen, God indwells temples. It is no accident, therefore, that Paul refers to the local body of believers as a temple and calls the individual Christian’s physical body a temple. In this age the ‘house of God’ does not refer to any church building; it refers to the group of believer who meet in such a building wherever their location is on earth. It even includes those who have died in Christ and are now in heaven.” There’s a footnote there if you want to chase that one down, look up that text, in the majority reading, the Tabernacle in heaven is blasphemed in the middle of the Tribulation. It’s called “those who dwell in heaven,” (comma) the Tabernacle. I think a strong evidence for the rapture of the Church prior to the end of the Tribulation.

“As the Temple of God in this age, the Church is where God meets man—where He reveals Himself and where reconciliation occurs. It is also the only place where God meets man for fellowship. The doctrine of indwelling with its temple imagery offends all advocates of religious pluralism by its dogmatic exclusivity,” meaning where’s the center of operations today. Believers, believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because we’re such good people? No. That’s just the way God has designed this age. The only place He meets people… you say wait a minute, can’t a hotten-tot meet somebody? Yeah, but how is a person led to Christ today, anywhere? By a message. Where did the message come from? From the temple, it came from believers. So everybody is led to Christ by contact some way with a message that is emanating from the Church.

“Through it alone comes the message of reconciliation in the atonement of Jesus Christ. In it alone is God illuminating hearts to His sanctifying light.” So there you have an outline of the doctrine of the temple, we’ve dealt with the doctrine of regeneration, next week we’re going to deal with baptism, and on page 53 you’ll see all the different uses of the word baptize, there are eight different uses of the word “baptize” in the Bible, and five of the eight are dry, only three are wet. Then you come to sealing on page 55 and on page 56 we’re going to deal with intercession, and the last one will be spiritual gifts. So those are the six things, RIBS plus intercession, plus spiritual gifts. Six things the Holy Spirit has done for us so it’s something to thank Him for, something to be appreciative of.

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Question asked: Clough replies: Each one of these metaphors or illustrations, like adoption, I think Dr. Chafer, who was the founder of Dallas Seminary, in his Systematic Theology lists 33 of them. We’ve just gone through 18 and it seems like a lot, but things like you mentioned, they’re all accumulated metaphors each with its own little contribution to sharpen our sense of what’s going on. And adoption is much more legal than regeneration. Regeneration is more creation. Adoption looks at it from the law standpoint and it was used in the first century Roman society that adoption meant quite a bit. Scholars have debated over whether it’s adoption in the Old Testament sense or adoption in the Roman sense. It seems that really Paul used the Roman sense, he didn’t use the Jewish sense, because remember, Paul was communicating to who? Primarily Gentiles. And in particular, that particular adoption passage is in Romans, so why not in Rome do as the Romans do. So he’s using a Roman metaphor and adoption was a lot more serious.

I haven’t studied a lot about the adoption but I’ve studied enough of it, there’s a scholar, an English legal professor who did a book, I can’t think of the title, Servant, Slaves and Sons or something like that, and it’s a study he did of all the intricate, legal manifestations of adoption. It turns out it’s a very, very rich picture of the privileges that we have as Christians in the family of God. And the idea of how our utter, unprivileged state that we came from in order to get into this, so it seems like the metaphor of adoption is to cause us to be thankful for what He’s done by bringing us into His home and letting us share the assets of the family that we had no business being a part of. It’s a powerful metaphor.

But all these are… you know, look at it from this point of view, look at it from that point of view, because there’s so many faceted [can’t understand word] on it that you could spend all eternity looking at what He has done here. That’s all I’m trying to do here, we’re touching this so fast and I kind of apologize for going through these verses so fast but again, this course is not one on exegesis, I’m just trying to accumulate these passages. Just with regeneration and indwelling you see all the connotations and implications of what’s going on here. Wait till we get to baptism, we’ll see another implication; with the sealing we see another implication. The intercession, that’s a fantastic thing, what the Holy Spirit does and the kind of praying He does, amazing! Then spiritual gifts and that doesn’t even begin to exhaust the work that God has done for us.

Question asked: Clough replies: That’s a good point, about how you usually don’t hear much about the work of the Holy Spirit, and there’s a reason for that too, there’s a theological reason for that. Turn to John 16, the Lord Jesus Christ tells us that that’s probably going to be the case. This is an interesting verse because it forces us back to the Trinity again. John 16:13-14, “Bu when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth;” He’s talking here to the apostles in context, and probably He’s referring mostly to the generation of the New Testament text, but pay attention as you read through this, look what the emphasis is on. “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come,” by the way, that shows you prophecy. The Holy Spirit is the One that gave all the prophetic passages to John.

Verse 14, “He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.” He’s not disclosing His own things. The Holy Spirit’s mission in life, in history, is to reveal the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, and because He does that so efficiently and so effectively, we tend to focus on Jesus, rightly, and then forget the fact, well wait a minute, who’s teaching us all this, and it’s the Holy Spirit.

Question asked: Clough replies: Yes, and the manifestation of the Spirit is actually a manifestation of Christ’s nature. The reason this is important is because in the history of the 20^th century there have been people fed up, and rightfully so in many cases, with what they call dead orthodoxy and they’ve drifted over into what we call charismatic theology. And in charismatic theology the emphasis is on glorifying the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t fit these passages. The Holy Spirit did not come to draw attention to Himself. He’s an eloquent example, by the way, that subordination doesn’t mean inferiority of person. The Holy Spirit is no less deity because He doesn’t say hey, here I am, I’m the Holy Spirit, everybody bow down to Me. He says bow down to Jesus, and He’s a perfect servant. As God He is a perfect servant because He receives of the Son and He magnifies the Son. It’s amazing, He’s a model for a servant, and so when, presumably when He leads us correctly and we adjust to Him we will be servants too and we will point, not to ourselves, but to the Lord Jesus Christ and make Him the issue, not what we are, and what great people we are. Thankfully we have enough Scripture so we can go back to the Scriptures and say well, we recognize the Holy Spirit, He’s done this, He’s done that, and we can be appreciative to Him for His work. It’s just that if He were here to speak tonight He’d say just glorify Christ.

Question asked, something about in light of Gal. 2:20… Clough replies: It’s hypothetical. If the Holy Spirit were to leave us, Paul says we would not be Christ’s. I mean, we’d lose our salvation and everything else, so the big idea here is just to hone in on some of the details of what it means to be a believer in the Church Age. That’s what this is all about, because that was… remember Appendix A on Reformed and Dispensational theology, and I said we can’t avoid it any longer discussing this because we’re going to get face to face with it. Well now you see what I mean. We’re starting to see the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament. We’re not undermining the Old Testament, the Old Testament is the foundation of the New Testament, but you can’t go in there and promiscuously grab hold of warning passages, etc. like that that are addressed to Israel and hastily, sometimes you can bring them over as metaphors, as wisdom, but you can’t go in there and hastily jerk them up and drop them over into the New Testament.

You can’t do that, because one of the Ten Commandments is what? Keep the Sabbath. Christians have over the centuries converted that to Sunday. But the Old Testament doesn’t know about anything on Sunday, the Old Testament is Saturday. That’s Old Testament and it still is Old Testament and you go to Israel and Friday night at sundown you don’t walk into some of these ultra orthodox places or they’ll stone you, even today, in Jerusalem, because they don’t want anybody messing around after sunset, 6:00 p.m. on Friday night, and you just be good boys and girls, and some of them don’t eat, don’t cook, use sandwiches I guess, all day on Saturday until 6:00 p.m. comes around and okay, now it’s Sunday, because the Jewish days start at night, just like creation starts in darkness and becomes light. The Jewish day starts in darkness and becomes light; it’s patterned after Gen. 1. So that’s why they have Saturday and that’s right. So now if we say well Sunday is Sabbath, we’ve got to re-analyze things. We understand, hey, it’s okay, Sunday is the Christian day because Jesus rose from the dead, etc., there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that the rules that pertain to the Sabbath, I think are really nice to take a break, but they’re not mandated in the Church Age. Where do you find the sabbatical legislation anywhere in the New Testament? You don’t find it.

Question asked something about Christ didn’t come to abolish the law…: Clough replies: Why not? If the law is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, then it hasn’t not been fulfilled, and it hasn’t not been abolished. The law held up a righteous standard to which Jesus submitted and proved Himself, and the point there is that the Old Testament… everybody is a dispensationalist of some sort, because they’ve got to say that parts of the Old Testament law are gone.

Same person says they make a distinction, the ceremonial law: Clough: Well, I understand that, but the law is a unit, and in particular in the New Testament if we had time we could go through 1 Cor. Paul is even citing, the law that is done away with and he quotes the Ten Commandments part of it. So you can’t fracture the Old Testament law. There’s only one covenant there, it’s called the Sinaitic Covenant. Think about it, can you take a mortgage, a loan agreement that you have on your car and take out paragraph 3 and leave paragraph 5 and go to the bank and say hey, it’s okay, I’m not breaking it. I don’t think so! And I don’t think you’re going to do that to your mortgage and I don’t think you’re going to do that to any other loan agreement that you have, and I don’t think you’re going to do that to any business contract you’re involved in. You’re not going to fracture up a contract, say oh well, gee, I don’t break it. What do you mean you don’t break it? You just wiped out half of it.

So every contract is inviolable that way. How do we in our society handle a problem like that? You renegotiate the contract, right? You sit down and agree that okay, we’ll drop paragraph 2 out and we’ll redo the contract, we’ll sign it again. But the new contract is still a unit, isn’t it. It’s gone from one unit to another unit. Are there same provisions in them? Yeah. The same thing as you go from one dispensation to the next. God signs a contract here; He modifies it and signs a contract over here, no problem. The point is that if when you have a lease, say for example, or better yet a loan agreement, what’s the loan agreement? The loan agreement is that after 24 payments you’re done. So you pay off the loan, it’s done. Now you don’t send checks to the bank, because you’re already paid it off. Well, if you don’t send checks to the bank can I come up to you and say hey, you’re breaking that contract, you’re not sending your checks in any more. Well, no, the contract was to cover the period of the loan. The loan is done, the contract is over, sorry, bye, I’m free of the contract. That’s the point. We’re free of the contract. It doesn’t mean we’re antinomian, that we don’t have another contract. We have a New Testament, that’s what He says, New Testament, and that thing is the whole set of epistles.

But here’s the trick and I’ll mention this later on in an Appendix. If you were to take the time and a concordance and look up every imperative mood, that is every command verb, from Acts 2 to the end of Rev. 3, take that whole part of the text, every verb, boom, boom, boom, boom, make a data base, and build a set of the commands that are in there. Now do the same thing in the Mosaic Law Code; you get your two data bases and compare and notice what’s missing in the New Testament. No hygienic laws, no ceremonial laws, no banking laws, no tax laws, no welfare laws, what’s going on? Answer: The Old Testament was given to a nation that needed policies; the New Testament is given to believers that live in hundreds of different nations and they’re not to make that an issue, they’re to make Christ the issue.

Does that mean we can’t use the Old Testament laws? No, we can go back and mine it for its wisdom principles, and we can to the extent as Christian citizens, we can campaign. When Nancy Jacobs got elected, one of the first things I did, I went and bought Rushdoony’s book which is a thick book, called The Institutes of Biblical Law, and you can look up every social function you want to in the Mosaic Law Code, and I gave it to her because I said you’re going to get in debates while you’re in this House of Delegates, this was when she was a delegate, and they’re going to come up and hit you, and you’ve got to figure out oh man, what do I do, what’s a good wise decision here, or there. Go back to the Law code; find out how God ruled His nation and maybe it will give you some insights. Some of them you can’t apply, some of them you can, some of them you want to and nobody wants to do it, that’s okay. But it’s a source of some intellectual content to your legislative debates in the House of Delegates. So that’s how you use the Old Testament, and how you’re going to use it today as a Christian citizen in this country. It’s not that we’re neglecting it, it’s that we are not saying it’s mandatory for every person in the United States of America to obey the Mosaic Law Code. Remember, it was given not to the Church; it was given to a nation. We’ll see more of this as we go on.

Someone says something: Clough says: It’s going to require a major and brilliant, brilliantly skillful approach and it may come down to a tug of war. I heard from a liberal source, I forgot where it was, I was reading it, that they said this latest, the episode we had with John Ashcroft, they said they were totally stunned in both houses of Congress by the outpouring of pro-Ashcroft. They said they never dreamed that he had the support. Well, he really didn’t. What happened was that it hit an issue, the Ashcroft thing hit an issue that was sitting there percolating all along and finally people that didn’t know Ashcroft from the man in the moon realized wait a minute, you talk about racial profiling, this is Christian profiling, they’re just waiting for a Christian to come up so they can shoot them. So there was thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of Christians saying enough is enough of this stuff and we’re going to do something about it. All of a sudden phone calls, e-mails, everything else came in. Whoa, we got a hot potato here, we’re good politicians, we’ll leave that one alone. So you’re okay John, fine, you take over. That’s what happens, and that’s the kind of response we’ve got to get but how we get that I don’t know. It’s just a lot of prayerful support and it’s skill. But we’ve been out maneuvered in a lot of areas.

Question asked or statement made: Clough replies: I think what breeds that is… see, the dirty little secret that the liberals haven’t figured out yet, nobody’s clued them, is that growing underneath this evangelical community are tens of thousands of home schooled kids that are now emerging, they’re hitting their twenties, and they don’t share that core value system that was imposed in the public schools. They don’t even come in contact with it, so now all of a sudden you really do have two cultures. I mean, our young people, the guys and gals that are hitting their early twenties, they’re going to really see some interesting days, because you talk about black and white society with no gray in between, that’s what they’re going to live in. It’s going to be exciting because they’ll be in a situation where it won’t be like the 50’s and 60’s where everybody was operating on kind of a quasi Christian basis, this is going to be the out and out pagans and the out and out Christians.

It’ll be a fascinating time, it’s just that they have to be fortified and they have to realize they’re taking on a big thing here. So I think that’s the fruit of a lot of work, we’ve been praying for revival and we’ve been praying for these kind of things, very quietly and not just home schoolers but godly couples raising their kids as best they can in the public system as well as the home schoolers, parents that have sent their kids to Christian schools. That’s been going on now for a generation of so and that’s bound to cause some interesting problems for the other side.

Our time is up.