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Lyall Johnston—September 23, 2023
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What is the Holy Spirit? We've already seen that the Holy Spirit is not a Trinity. That is a pagan doctrine! It is not the doctrine of the Bible! It has nothing to do with the true ministry of God and His Spirit, and the Word from His Son, Jesus Christ.
It is a doctrine that came out of the minds of men who are following the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
They're deciding for themselves through their theology, which a lot of it is based on. Greek philosophy that goes right back through Egypt and to Babylonian mystery religions in the days of Nimrod, and particularly his wife, Semiramis, where many of these false doctrines came from.
Of course, the whole theme there is the worship of Satan and doing away with God's Plan, that God is a Family and that God is creating within us His own mind and His own life.
Paul tells us in Heb.10:16, that God is writing as well as giving His laws and His commandments on our hearts.
The whole purpose of that is to convert our minds, to transform our minds from the thinking of Satan, the devil, to the thinking and to every thought and every word that comes from the mouth of God. This is the battle of the Christian life!
We were looking at some Scriptures that Paul has given to us with that very phrase, inner working. In other words, the inner working of God within His people!
Who are the people of God? The people of God are those who obey Him, who keep His commandments! They are the people that God has called out of this world, which is rapidly heading 'down the tubes' to destruction. We look at the world and it seems that the whole world around us has gone mad, it has gone crazy. And that's all a result because of Satan's deception of—right from the beginning—our first parents beginning with Eve, where she was deceived and took of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
In other words, the tree that represented man making his own decision as to what is true and right and Holy in his mind called good and evil, ignoring the teaching of God!
Let's just have a look at something because in the past we've heard a lot about the two trees in the garden. But is that all that was in the garden? We find that there was a time when God was recreating the surface of the earth that the plants had not yet begun to grow.
Genesis 2:5: "The shrub of the field was not yet growing upon the earth, and the herb of the field had not yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground, but there went up from the earth a mist and watered all the face of the ground. Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (vs 5-7)—or soul (Hebrew: 'nephesh)—a living human being!
Man does not have an immortal soul, but man lives a soul and he can die. He will die. It is appointed, as Paul said in Heb. 9:27 for all men to die once. But after that, of course, we know there's going to be the resurrection and the judgment for those who are righteous to immortality. For those who are the incorrigible dead to the Lake of Fire and the second death. But of course, we know that God's Holy Day Plan tells us a lot more.
Now, for those of you who have never had or never read, or who perhaps we all need to read again, is the great publication called God's Plan for Mankind, Revealed by His Sabbath and Holy Days. An incredible book. It's a large book and it covers the subject of God's Plan like no other book that you'll find.
In fact, most churches do not understand God's Plan. They're all deceived and confused because it says that Satan has deceived the whole world, even the churches believing and claiming to be the Christian churches because they have turned their backs on God! They have refused to keep His commandments the same as ancient Israel did. God sent them into captivity.
Today, the nations of modern Israel are heading for captivity again:
- we look at the decay
- we look at the idiocy
- we look at the lunacy that's taking place at all levels of life
Life has become crazy, idiotic, and very difficult for young people to find the Truth anymore. Unless God has them in mind and draws them and reveals the Truth to them. God wants and is going to be calling young people, those who have refused in the main to follow the mainstream of the world today. Those who can see there is more to life than just the idiocy all around them. God has and God will call, and He will provide for them.
Verse 8: "And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…." (vs 8-9).
What we find with Eve when she was approached by Satan? He told her, look, here's the tree that God says you shouldn't eat of. She saw that it's pleasant for food, it's good to the eyes. But God had already provided food for them. Does not the rest of the trees in the garden represent God telling man His commandments:
- this is what you can eat
- this is what you can do
- here the Tree of Life
- this is what you should not do
And the day that you eat of that tree in dying, you will begin to die.
True enough, we look further down in the chapters of Genesis, we find that Adam and Eve and all that followed them came to the end of their lives and they died, because they disobeyed God!
Because of that, because of Satan's deception, God then at that very beginning, right in Gen.3, God shows how that he was going to send His Son Jesus Christ to solve the problems caused by Satan.
God's Plan was not destroyed because of Satan's deception!
Now we want to get back into these Scriptures of God's inner working! God is working within His people.
When God begins to call us, as Jesus said, He was going to send the Comforter, which was the Holy Spirit, His power, not a member of the trinity. He was going to send His Spirit to help us in everything that we needed in order to become born into the Family of God.
When God calls us, when we repent, we're baptized, we have the hands laid on, we received the Holy Spirit, our spiritual lives begin. Before we're baptized, God actually gives us His Spirit to be with us when He calls us; His Spirit is with us.
Why? So that we can understand what God wants us to do! So we can understand what baptism is, what He has in mind for us as part of His Plan is concerned.
- He wants us to understand what repentance is
- He wants us to understand what His Laws are
- He wants us to understand the benefits of keeping His laws and Hs commandments
For example, the seventh day, as we can read in Exo. 31, where God says to Moses, 'Teach the people of Israel these things.'
To summarize that very quickly, what He was teaching them was to keep the Sabbath Day. Why? Because the Sabbath Day identified Him as the God of creation! The Sabbath Day also revealed to the people that He is the one, true and only God!
Sunday was never the day that God created and made Holy. It's a work day. But the Sabbath, God put His blessing on it and He hallowed it, and the Sabbath Day is sanctified from day seven of the recreation right down to today, which is the Sabbath.
Today is a day that has been sanctified and made Holy by God:
- God wants us to come before Him
- He wants us to learn of His ways
- He wants us to learn by our obedience
That identifies us as the people of God to God!
But for us, the Sabbath Day identifies the true God as opposed to the god of Sunday, who is none other than Satan the devil. So, people worship the sun and as they worship the sun on Sunday, they're actually worshiping Satan the devil. That's the history behind that. You can read a lot of that in Hislop's Two Babylon's. Today we have a second Babylon. Coming back to the statements about the inner workings.
Eph. 4—were told here that God gave us His elders—namely the apostles—those men in the first century that were the witnesses to the fact that Jesus Christ was the son of God and he came and he died for mankind, so that mankind eventually could be born into the Family of God.
No one has yet been born into that family except Jesus Christ. The rest of us are still flesh and blood. When we die, we're dead; we know nothing, as the Scripture says. It's like we go to sleep until the time when everyone will hear the voice of Christ in their own timing, those in the first resurrection. The time of Jesus intervention in world affairs.
You can read all about that in the book: God's Plan For Mankind Revealed by His Sabbath and Holy Days. A great book. It'll give you more knowledge about the Plan of God than you will get from any other source on the face of the earth.
Ephesians 4:11: "And He gave some asapostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers… [Why?]: …for the perfecting of the saints…" (vs 11-12).
What's the perfecting of the saints? Helping each one of us to become like God! Remember Gen. 1:26, 'Let Us make man in Our image. So, when Jesus came He appeared as a man.
God is making us according to His likeness. That's why it says here the perfecting of the saints. As we read previously in Heb. 6, God wants us, Christ wants us to go on to perfection.
Once we've made known the foundation of the beginning principles—tie in Heb. 6 beginning in v 1—God wants us to go on to perfection. That's what Paul is talking about here, because Paul was concerned about the people who are not growing and maturing in the faith.
"…for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the Body of Christ" (v 12).
Yes, the Church is called the Body of Christ. We are in the Body of Christ. His Spirit is within us and the Spirit of the Father is within us.
Verse 13: "Until we all come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man…"
That perfect man will be one that is identical in mind and in heart as David was to God, but identical in mind and heart to Jesus Christ. Who was the Lord and God of David. So, we can learn a lot about David. How he loved God's Law, how he kept God's law and commandments. And how God says of Himself that 'David is a man after My own heart.'
- Are you?
- Am I?
- Men and women after God's own heart?
- Are we pursuing that as our goal?
- Do we no longer have confidence in the flesh, but confidence in the Spirit of God?
- Can we be like Paul in Philip. 3 where he said everything that wasn't advantage to him, he cast it off like it was human waste, 'dung' is the word they use, that he might gain Christ?
- Do we have that kind of approach? That I may gain Christ and the power of His resurrection!
Paul endured to the end, and he is going to be in that first resurrection and deal along with the rest of us as we qualify to become members of God's Family. To bring the Kingdom of God and salvation to all mankind. That's the goal. That's what we're looking forward to.
"…unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (v 13).
That's our goal, and we reach that goal by obedience to God. We reach that goal by developing the fruits of the Spirit, by putting off the works of the flesh (Gal. 5). And in 2-Peter 1, as we mentioned previously, you have what some call a ladder of virtues or the ladder where we are progressing in developing the mind and the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
Verse 14: "So that we no longer be children…"
We've got to grow up! As we said previously, Heb. 5, the brethren would be in the Church a long time, but they were not growing. They were still ruminating around the basic doctrines.
- they weren't going on to perfection
- they weren't going on to developing the mind of Christ
- they weren't going on to develop the fruits of God's Spirit
- they weren't trusting in the armor of God (Eph. 6)
Verse 14: "So that we no longer be children…"
There is a time in the Body of Christ that we are children; that's when God first called us. But we must begin to take responsibility for our own growth and grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We will never in this life come to the fullness of the knowledge of the Father and Christ. We will advance a great deal; the rest of it will come in the resurrection. God wants to see us developing His mind:
- to know Him
- to know His thoughts
- to know His ways
- to live by His thoughts
- to live by His ways
As he says through the prophet Isaiah!
"…tossed and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men in cunning craftiness… [doctrine of the trinity, a great, big, fat lie and deception that is] …with a view to the systematizing of the error" (v 14).
I think of systematic theology, let's get it all systematized. Let's throw out this principle of a precept here and a precept there; let's bring all the precepts that God has given us together, sort through them, let's understand them. Let God show us
- the way we should go
- the way we should walk
- His Truth
- His doctrines
When it's systematized, you lose sight of the very mind and attitude of Christ! It becomes an intellectual exercise, not an exercise and not a work in the power of the in-dwelling workings of God by His Spirit within us.
Verse 15: "But holding the Truth in love, may in all things grow up into Him Who is the Head, even Christ from Whom all the Body, fitly framed and compacted together by that which every joint supplies… [were all part of that body, Christ is within us] …according to its inner working in the measure of each individual part, is making the increase of the body…" (vs 15-16).
What we supply by developing the fruits of God's Spirit is adding to the Body.
It's like taking the Church as a circle. Here we are just one point on that circle. Everything that we add, as we grow in the grace and the knowledge of God's Spirit personally, individually, it affects the rest of that circle. The circle enlarges. Just as we put on the fruits of God's Spirit, the mind of Christ and the mind of the Father grows and expands within us!
That has an influence on the rest of the Body; we are integral parts of the Body of Christ.
1-Cor. 6-- We've been purchased with the sacrifice of Christ by his body, we now belong to God the Father, we are obligated to walk as Jesus walked, obeying every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, by coming before God, submitting, humbling ourselves before God and before man, and particularly humbling ourselves before the brethren.
The Church in the past has suffered so much because we failed as brethren to humble ourselves both before God and before and before our fellow brothers and sisters, because we were proud; we were puffed up! So, we've had to repent of that.
"…According to the inner workings in the measure of the individual part is making the increase of the body into the edifying of itself and love" (v 16). Each individual, we're all adding to the body of Christ!
Verse 23: "And that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind."
Every day when we pray, we confess our sins and we ask God to regenerate, to stimulate His Spirit within us, to His Spirit within us day-by-day. It is well that we remember to do every day to ask God to renew His Spirit with us because we need that renewing day-by-day. Of course, we feed the Spirit also with the Word of God.
Verse 24: "And that you put on the new man, which according to God is created in righteousness and Holiness of the Truth."
Philip. 3 is talking about Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ:
Philippians 3:21: "Who will transform our vile bodies…" That's what He's doing now as we learn to:
- walk in His ways
- keep His Sabbath Days
- keep His Holy annual Sabbaths
- obey the rest of His Laws
He's transforming our vile bodies, and the finality of that comes at the resurrection when our bodies that are decaying and decomposing… Once we die, after three days, rigor mortis sets in, and after that, of course, the body begins to decompose until we return back to the ashes.
But God is going to, of course, raise us, give us a new body, which will never suffer rigor mortis and suffer the process of death. But this body will be eternal, mortal, spiritual body because we have demonstrated to God that is what we want.
"…that they may be conformed to His glorious body…" (v 21)
He's giving us all the power. He's giving us all the instruction, all the power and the will that we need to accomplish this.
"…according to the inner working of His own power, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself" (v 21).
Whatever is within us that we're struggling against the sins of the flesh, the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, the pretentious pride within us, He is able to subdue that by His Power, which He places within us.
Philippians 1:6: "Being confident of this very thing… [here's a point of confidence] …that He Who began a good work in you… [here's the encouragement]: …will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ."
We know that we may in the meantime die. So, for us who die, it will be when Christ returns. But He's going to complete that work until Christ returns or until the day we die.
Philippians 2:13—God is doing a work in us: "For it is God Who works in [within] you… [God is working within us] …both [#1]to will…"
God gives us the will to obey Him, obedience and the subjection to the mind and teachings of God the Father and Jesus Christ. But more than that, not only does He give us the will, but He gives us what Paul says is the to do. He gives us what we are to do, but He gives us the power to do what He wills us to do.
"…and [#2]to do according to His good pleasure.
- God is leading us
- God is guiding us
- God is giving us the way to walk
Our part is to walk in that way!
Scriptural References:
- Genesis 2:5-9
- Ephesians 4:11-16, 23-24
- Philippians 3:21
- Philippians 1:6
- Philippians 2:13
Scriptures referenced, not quoted:
- Hebrews 10:16; 9:27
- Exodus 31
- Genesis 1:26
- Hebrews 6:1+
- Galatians 5
- 2 Peter 1
- Hebrew 5
- Ephesians 6
- 1 Corinthians 6
Also referenced: Books:
- God's Plan for Mankind, Revealed by His Sabbath and Holy Days by Fred R. Coulter
- Two Babylon's by Alexander Hislop
LJ:bo
Transcribed: 9/27/23
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