I. We have noted that the third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is often misunderstood.<\/p>\n A. People have let the imaginations run wild in regard to who the Spirit is and\nespecially in how He operates.\n B. Many of the incorrect beliefs are based on phrases found in the Bible, taken out of\ncontext of the whole scripture.\n
C. An example of this is Romans 8:14<\/p>\n
II. What is meant by “led by the Spirit?”<\/p>\n A. The denominational world, especially Charismatic groups, believe that the Spirit\ndirectly operates on each Christian — guiding us in our day-to-day lives.\n 1. Some feel that this is done by giving free reign to their impulses or yielding\nto their hunches.\n 2. Some believe the Spirit illuminates the written Word for them so they may\nbe able to understand it.\n 3. Some claim they receive special blessings of spiritual strength (the ability to\nbehave righteously) directly from the Spirit separate and apart from the\nwritten Word and separate from God’s providence in the world.\n
4. Others believe they hear a voice speaking directly to them from the Spirit.<\/p>\n 5. Others believe the Spirit leads them by showing them special signs which\nindicate the specific decisions needed to be made at a given time.\n 6. Some wait on the Spirit to lead them to get up in the morning, which socks\nto wear, and even which one to put on first!\n B. Notice that these beliefs are different from the idea of God’s providence working\nin our lives.\n 1. When Joseph’s brothers sought to remove him from their lives, God used\nthe occasion to preserve Abraham’s descendants – Gen. 50:20\n
a. But Joseph’s brothers did not feel the leading of the Spirit.<\/p>\n b. Joseph was given the interpretation of dreams, but there is little else\nshown as a leading in his life.\n 2. Esther was queen just at the time when the Jews were about to be wiped\nout by one man’s hatred – Est. 4:14\n a. Yet neither Esther nor Mordecai felt the leading of the Spirit inside\nthem.\n b. Notice that God’s deliverance would come no matter what Esther\nchose to do.\n 3. God is so in control of this world that He can turn even the wicked events\nin this world to produce righteous outcomes. – Rom. 8:28\n a. But the examples in the Scriptures show the God works His\nprovidence through the events surrounding His people.\n b. There are times that He deals directly with his people, but that is\nnot what we usually call His providence.\n 4. These beliefs are not in the realm of providence. They believe that the\nSpirit does things directly in a Christian’s heart that He does not do\nthrough His Word alone.\n
C. Many of these beliefs are creeping into the church.<\/p>\n
1. Perhaps they should. Perhaps they should not.<\/p>\n 2. The only determinate is God’s Word. What does God mean by “led by the\nSpirit?”\n
III. What is the Holy Spirit’s work?<\/p>\n
A. The Spirit reveals the mind of God to mankind – I Pet. 1:10-12<\/p>\n B. He insured that the revelation was accurately related to man without error. The\nprocess of inerrantly revealing God’s mind to man is called inspiration – I Cor. \n2:7-13\n
C. The Spirit then confirmed the revelation to be divine truth. – Heb. 2:3-4<\/p>\n D. As a result of His work, he convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgement\n– John 16:7-13\n
1. How is this done? By the product of His work – the Word of God<\/p>\n
2. Eph. 6:17 – Sword of the Spirit is the word of God<\/p>\n
3. II Tim. 3:16-17 – The inspired word is able to reprove the world of sin<\/p>\nIV. During the first century, the Spirit did directly tell some Christians were they needed to\ngo.\n
A. Acts 8:29 – The Spirit directed Philip to the eunuch<\/p>\n
B. Acts 10:19-20 – The Spirit got Peter and Cornelius together<\/p>\n
C. Acts 16:6-10 – The Spirit directed Paul to travel to Macedonia<\/p>\n D. But even in the days of miracles, these direct messages were regarded as\nexceptional.\n
1. Not everyone had the miraculous gifts of the Spirit – I Cor. 12:28-30<\/p>\n 2. There is no implication that every Christian’s movements were guided by\nthe Spirit by direct revelation.\nV. So how are we led by the Spirit? Or perhaps we should ask the other side of the question,\nhow do we follow the Spirt?\n
A. Isa 48:16-18 – God leads when we follow His commandments.<\/p>\n
B. Gal. 5:16-25 – Walk in the Spirit<\/p>\n 1. How does the Spirit produces things like love, joy, patience, etc in our lives\nif not through the Word that He has given us?\n 2. Surely it doesn’t take a miraculous intervention in a person’s life to follow\nthe Spirit into these things.\n
C. The law of the Spirit has freed us – Rom. 8:1-2<\/p>\n
D. People who pursue spiritual things, pursue the things of the Spirit. – Rom 8:5-6<\/p>\n
E. I Pet 2:22-25 – It is the Spirit’s work, the Word of God, that purifies us.<\/p>\n
VI. The Spirit has done much for us in changing us into new creatures<\/p>\n
A. But too many look for some mysterious, magical method of change.<\/p>\n B. The fact that God chose to accomplish this change through a plain book is too\nsimple\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I. We have noted that the third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is often misunderstood. A. People have let the imaginations run wild in regard to who the Spirit is and especially in how He operates. B. Many of the incorrect beliefs are based on phrases found in the Bible, taken out of context of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[86],"class_list":["post-7107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","tag-holy-spirit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11708,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-the-spirit-of-god-the-same-as-the-holy-spirit\/","url_meta":{"origin":7107,"position":0},"title":"Is the Spirit of God the same as the Holy Spirit?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Is the Spirit of God the same as the Holy Spirit? Answer: \"Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption\" (Ephesians 4:30). The phrase \"Spirit of God\" and \"Holy Spirit\" refer to the same being. He is also sometimes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":69348,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-holy-spirit-indwelling-and-the-word\/","url_meta":{"origin":7107,"position":1},"title":"The Holy Spirit: Indwelling and the Word","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 17, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Don Blackwell The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit God is in Christians Christians are in God (I John 4:11-16) Christ is in Christians Christians are in Christ (Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 3:17) The Spirit dwells in Christians Christians are in the Spirit (Romans 8:11; Galatians 5:16,25) The mind of Christ\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Notes","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7819,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/was-the-spirit-of-christ-the-holy-spirit\/","url_meta":{"origin":7107,"position":2},"title":"Was the spirit of Christ the Holy Spirit?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 17, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Was the spirit of Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit? We say the Jesus is God. Jesus said that God is Spirit. This implies that the Spirit also has a sub-spirit. The spirit of Jesus was certainly not the Holy Spirit because while dying on the cross he uttered: \"Father\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7098,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/what-is-the-role-of-the-holy-spirit-today\/","url_meta":{"origin":7107,"position":3},"title":"What is the role of the Holy Spirit today?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: What is the role of the Holy Spirit today? What does it really mean by \"indwell' vs \"live in us\" vs \"body is the temple of God\"? Do they mean the same thing? Is there a complete list of gifts that we can get from the Holy Spirit today?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":60823,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-holy-spirit\/","url_meta":{"origin":7107,"position":4},"title":"The Holy Spirit (Fulford)","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"May 22, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"by Hugh Fulford Quite possibly more confusion exists with reference to the Holy Spirit than any other Bible subject. The divine personality of the Holy Spirit is not recognized by many people; how He works in the conviction and conversion of sinners and in the life of a Christian is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":67461,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/as-the-holy-spirit-says\/","url_meta":{"origin":7107,"position":5},"title":"As the Holy Spirit Says","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 13, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Wane Benton When the topic of \"inspiration\" (breathed of God) is brought up, some will argue that we don't know how the Scriptures are \"breathed of God,\" but we do know that the words of the Scriptures were delivered from God's mind to the mind of the writers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}