The Spirit Guides You
Romans 8:14
August 18, 2013
As you know we are studying the Holy Spirit.
We want to know who He is, and we want to know how to follow Him.
We read much about the Holy Spirit in Scripture
And we see various commands like “be filled with the Spirit” or “walk by the Spirit” and we want to know what that is all about.
So we are studying the Holy Spirit.
This is now the 12th sermon we have had on this subject
And everything thus far has been about who He is.
It is vitally important you know who He is,
Before you jump off the dock and go to follow Him.
None of us want to follow the wrong spirit, so we find out who He is.
And this morning we are going to look at the final aspect of who He is.
• We’ve seen the PROMISE of the Spirit
• We’ve seen the PERSON of the Spirit
• We are looking at the PURPOSE of the Spirit
By now we know His FINGERPRINTS,
Which help us discern when it is really the Holy Spirit at work.
• Convict the world of sin
• Guide you into all the truth
• Glorify Jesus
And we have been looking at those VARIOUS EMBLEMS
That further help explain Him.
WATER – The Holy Spirit gives life.
You were physically alive before, but when He moved in, you became truly alive for the first time.
FIRE – The Holy Spirit sanctifies you.
He sets you apart from the world, and He sets you apart unto God. He is the One who is purifying you an making you what God desires you to be.
OIL – The Holy Spirit anoints you.
He is what qualifies you to serve God. You have no right on your own to be in the King’s service, but the Holy Spirit grants you that privilege.
WIND – The Holy Spirit equips you.
Wind represents power, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives you the ability to serve God. We see Spiritual gifts, and we understand that this is the Holy Spirit manifesting Himself in order to help you do God’s service.
SEAL – The Holy Spirit Seals you.
He is the source of your assurance. Jesus makes you secure, the Holy Spirit lets you enjoy that security. He is a seal that you are God’s child, He is a pledge that you truly will receive your inheritance one day.
And based upon those truths we all understand that
The Holy Spirit is a tremendous benefit to our lives.
Apart from Him:
No Life – couldn’t even be a believer
No Sanctification – couldn’t ever please God
No Anointing – no right to serve God
No Power – no ability to serve God
No Assurance – no joy as we do serve God
It is obvious that we need the Holy Spirit.
It is obvious that we want the Holy Spirit.
Do not look at the perversions done in His name today
And let them convince you that
The Holy Spirit is someone to be avoided. He is not.
You need Him, You want Him
He is God in us.
Well this morning I want to look at the final emblem we see of Him.
(There may be more, but these are the ones that I recognize)
And this morning we are going to look at the most famous.
If I handed out sheets of paper this morning and asked everyone
To draw the Holy Spirit, most in here would draw the same thing.
They would draw a DOVE.
The Holy Spirit is represented by a dove.
Matthew 3:16 “After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him,”
WHY A DOVE?
Well, we see a dove at various times in Scripture.
The other famous dove was the dove in Noah’s day.
Genesis 8:6-12 “Then it came about at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made; and he sent out a raven, and it flew here and there until the water was dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove from him, to see if the water was abated from the face of the land; but the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, so she returned to him into the ark, for the water was on the surface of all the earth. Then he put out his hand and took her, and brought her into the ark to himself. So he waited yet another seven days; and again he sent out the dove from the ark. The dove came to him toward evening, and behold, in her beak was a freshly picked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the water was abated from the earth. Then he waited yet another seven days, and sent out the dove; but she did not return to him again.”
That dove there was obviously a symbol of hope,
And even a type of guide for Noah and those on the boat.
The dove was the informant who gave Noah the information he needed to know
That they would soon exit the ark.
Of course we don’t push the illustration too far,
Because that dove left and didn’t return and the Holy Spirit never does that.
But we do see a picture of hope and a guide.
Jesus spoke of a dove as He spoke to His disciples.
Matthew 10:16 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”
And we understand there that dove a represented innocence, or purity.
This was also understood in the fact that
The dove was a bird of sacrifice.
For those who were poor and could not afford a ram or a bull,
They were allowed to sacrifice doves.
So a dove was gentle, and innocent, and pure.
But really when we see the Holy Spirit
Taking the form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism,
The dove had more to do with Jesus than it did the Holy Spirit.
• This was the Spirit that was upon Jesus.
• The dove represented Jesus’ nature.
• The dove represented Jesus’ personality.
Matthew 12:15-21 “But Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there. Many followed Him, and He healed them all, and warned them not to tell who He was. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: “BEHOLD, MY SERVANT WHOM I HAVE CHOSEN; MY BELOVED IN WHOM MY SOUL is WELL-PLEASED; I WILL PUT MY SPIRIT UPON HIM, AND HE SHALL PROCLAIM JUSTICE TO THE GENTILES. “HE WILL NOT QUARREL, NOR CRY OUT; NOR WILL ANYONE HEAR HIS VOICE IN THE STREETS. “A BATTERED REED HE WILL NOT BREAK OFF, AND A SMOLDERING WICK HE WILL NOT PUT OUT, UNTIL HE LEADS JUSTICE TO VICTORY. “AND IN HIS NAME THE GENTILES WILL HOPE.”
I hope you remember that passage in relation to Jesus.
It spoke of His gentle character as He would lead the people.
By reason of God’s Spirit being upon Him,
Jesus would not only proclaim justice,
But would do it in a gentle manner.
“He will not quarrel, nor cry out”
“quarrel” is the Greek word EPIZO
It means “to wrangle, or harass, it could even mean to brawl”
Jesus wasn’t that type of leader or preacher.
He didn’t brow beat people or intimidate them or threaten them.
“cry out” translates KRAUGAZO
That word is an onomatopoeia which is a word defined by it’s pronunciation.
Like when you speak of a horse’s “Nay” or a cow’s “Moo”
KRAUGAZO meant “to squawk like a raven”
It was someone yelling excitedly.
That wasn’t who Jesus was,
Because that wasn’t the Spirit that was on Him.
He was gentle, He was kind, He was hope, He was peace.
“A battered reed He will not break off”
That represented someone so broken by life, that they were beyond repair. The world throws them away, but not Jesus.
“A smoldering wicked He will not put out”
That represented someone whose light is almost gone. The world discards them, but not Jesus.
Jesus was kind, Jesus was gentle, Jesus was hope, Jesus was peace.
And “He leads justice to victory”
And because they are both God,
That is also the nature of the Holy Spirit,
And that is why the Spirit came in the form of a dove.
The Holy Spirit is also a gentle guide.
How many times do we see this in the Scripture?
Matthew 4:1 “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”
Acts 8:29 “Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go up and join this chariot.”
Acts 13:2 “While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
Acts 16:6-7 “They passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia; and after they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them;”
Acts 20:22-23 “And now, behold, bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions await me.”
Or go read the seven churches in the book of Revelation.
All 7 messages end with the same phrase:
Revelation 3:22 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'”
It is obvious that the Holy Spirit is a guide.
Now He is not a yeller and a screamer.
He is not a brute.
He won’t threaten you or brow beat you.
• He is a dove.
• He is a gentle guide.
• He won’t discard you
• He won’t throw you aside
• He is in the business of gently guiding you to justice and to victory.
That is who He is.
• He is your source of life
• He is your source of sanctification
• He is your source of anointing
• He is your source of ability
• He is your source of assurance
• And He is your guide as to how to live.
And that leads us to our text this morning.
“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
Now I hope to come back and look at the entire passage
Surrounding this verse in a few weeks,
But for now I really just want you to focus in on what Paul says here.
Paul is very clear that there is a distinguishable way
To determine who is a child of God.
It is those “who are being led by the Spirit of God”
And this makes perfect sense to us.
Do you respond differently to your children than you do everyone else’s?
Of course you do.
You are constantly watching your kids to see if they need a little correction.
You tell them to “sit down” “be quiet” “come here” “say, ‘Thank You’”.
Your life is constantly guiding your kids.
And the parents who are the best parents are those who take that role the most seriously and are continually watching and guiding their children.
At times this guidance even turns to discipline.
And that is also a mark of God’s guidance.
What do we read in the book of Hebrews?
Hebrews 12:7-11 “It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
God is continually dealing with us as sons.
He guides, and at times He even corrects and disciplines.
To what end?
“so that we may share His holiness”
He is our Father, and He is always leading us.
Now, what we learn especially from the verse in Romans
Is that the agent through whom God leads us is “the Spirit of God”
It is the Holy Spirit that guides God’s children.
• He leads them as to how they are to walk.
• He corrects them when they need correcting.
• He may even orchestrate discipline in our lives.
But He is guiding us, He is leading us.
And you need to know this.
If you are a child of God.
Then you “are being led by the Spirit of God”.
Often times you hear believers pray that God will lead and guide them.
I understand the motive behind that prayer.
They are saying they want God in charge directing their path.
There is nothing wrong with that.
Psalms 25:4-5 “Make me know Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, For You are the God of my salvation; For You I wait all the day.”
Psalms 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.”
But you do need to understand,
A believer is never in danger of God not leading them.
If you are a child of God, the Holy Spirit is leading you.
He is guiding you.
Now, you may not be following His lead, or obeying His guidance,
But He is leading none the less.
“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
If you are His child, He is leading you.
Isaiah 48:16-17 “Come near to Me, listen to this: From the first I have not spoken in secret, From the time it took place, I was there. And now the Lord GOD has sent Me, and His Spirit.” Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, Who leads you in the way you should go.”
Jeremiah 10:23 “I know, O LORD, that a man’s way is not in himself, Nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps.”
God is always the One who directs His people.
And now, it is the Holy Spirit who directs and guides God’s children.
He has a plan for your life, and He is pushing you towards it.
I suppose then that the next logical question is how does He do it?
• I mean we read that the Holy Spirit led Jesus to the wilderness.
• We read that the Holy Spirit led Philip.
• We read that the Holy Spirit led the church at Antioch.
• We read that the Holy Spirit led Paul.
How does He do that?
In those instances it is not made clear to us how.
But Scripture is not unclear as to how He does it.
One clear way has always been SCRIPTURE.
TURN TO: 2 Peter 1:19-21
2 Peter 1:19-21 “So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”
Now Peter is clear there.
No Scripture was ever written apart from the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.
“men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”
That also means that no one can interpret Scripture
Apart from the help of the Holy Spirit.
Isn’t that what Paul taught us in 1 Corinthians 2?
“a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them.”
God wrote it, and so only God knows what it truly means.
And that is why Peter said:
“no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation,”
We don’t read a verse and ask, “What does that mean to me?”
No, you don’t get to determine the meaning.
It only matters what God meant when He wrote it.
So the Holy Spirit guided men what to write,
And then guides men as to what it means.
Our job, then is only to follow that guidance.
“So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place”
That is a great analogy.
If it is dark, you are prone to trip and stumble.
A light guides you where to walk.
That is how the Holy Spirit leads you.
He leads you like a lamp in darkness.
What did the Psalmist say?
Psalms 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.”
That is how the Holy Spirit is guiding you.
What did we study when we looked at His fingerprints?
John 16:13 “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.”
Remember He guides you “into all the truth”
We also remember that He is totally focused in this regard.
“He will not speak on His own initiative.”
That means not only is He a guide, but He is a RELIABLE GUIDE.
He never gives bad advice.
He never gets a wild hair.
He always guides according to the truth.
And He guides you into the truth of Scripture.
We are reminded of what Paul told Timothy:
2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
It is God who spoke the Scripture (the Holy Spirit) and He does so
To lead us into being the type of person God intends for us to be.
The Holy Spirit is constantly guiding you,
And He is doing so through the word of God.
But that isn’t the only way He guides.
TURN TO: Colossians 3:15-16
Now this is a unique passage, and actually it is a sister passage
To one that we read in Ephesians.
Ephesians 5:18-19 “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;”
The only difference is there Paul says, “be filled with the Spirit”
In Colossians Paul says, “let the word of Christ richly dwell within you”
But obviously he is speaking about the same reality.
And that further emphasizes the fact that
The Holy Spirit works to lead us through the Scripture.
But in that same passage we see another way the Spirit of God leads us.
(15) “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…”
• Ever hear someone say, “I just don’t have a peace about that”?
• Ever hear someone say, “I just got some red flags there”?
Why do you suppose that is?
That is the Holy Spirit who has brought about an absence of peace
In regard to a specific situation.
And this also works in regard to how we live.
As a believer, have you ever gone out and done something you knew you weren’t supposed to do?
Maybe you knew ahead of time, but it was just going to be too much fun,
So you did it anyway.
Now, if you aren’t a child of God, the only thing that bothers you
Is the fear of getting caught.
But if you are a child of God, and you go out and do something
In clear violation of God’s will.
HOW DID YOU FEEL?
Terrible.
You know what that feeling was?
• It was a lack of peace.
• Instantly you knew that you and God were not on the same page.
You were still His child.
But you could sense that there was a displeasure there.
That is another way the Holy Spirit leads a believer.
He gives peace and He takes it away.
So He uses the Scripture to guide you.
He uses peace within to guide you.
Now there are other sort of secondary ways in which He leads,
But it really always comes back to those two.
For example:
He can lead through the church.
Take for instance a sinning brother, and how the whole church
Eventually rebukes him and calls for repentance.
That rebuke is the Holy Spirit leading the body
To bring about a drastic form of leadership in his life.
Listen to Paul:
1 Corinthians 5:3-5 “For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
He uses the church to guide believers
Through the equipping of Spiritual gifts.
Ephesians 4:11-13 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”
There the Holy Spirit guides other believers
By equipping some to preach and teach the word.
But in all reality that still comes back to His use of the Scriptures and of peace, even if it is corporate peace.
The main thing I want you to understand is that
You are not living this Christian life
According to your own understanding.
In fact:
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.”
You have a guide.
You have a leader.
And this is a good thing.
For Scripture is clear about the consequences of having no leader.
Matthew 15:14 “Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
That is the danger.
We need someone to guide us in this life.
• We aren’t out looking for signs…
• We aren’t trusting fate…
• We aren’t leaning on our own intelligence…
We have a guide.
• He is gentle, not rude.
• He is compassionate…
And He always leads us according to the will of God.
If we follow His leadership we end up sanctified,
Enjoying abundant life, useable to God,
Equipped for every good work,
And totally assured of who we are in Christ.
And you put all those together,
And that is the purpose of the Holy Spirit.
He has come:
• To Give you Life
• To Sanctify You
• To Anoint You
• To Equip You
• To Give you Assurance
• And to Guide you as to how to live
That is His purpose.
And you can see He is not someone to dread, or to fear, or to reject.
Listen to Him, follow Him, obey Him, and let Him use you.
And that is where we are going next.
We have now seen who He is.
When we meet next time we’re going to start talking about
How to walk according to the Spirit.
And there is found the secret of Christian victory.
