What Spirit Lives In You?

Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints, and impact our culture. Listen, I have a good work for you today. God want you to leave the past and the past. He wants you to know something. Stop vlogging yourself over the things that you cannot remedy. That's why Jesus went to the cross. Trust Him. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. I'm going to give you four options that are predominantly prevailing options with respect to the assurance of salvation. Now before I read these, listen up everybody. You say, Jack, you just said assurance of salvation. In fact, you mentioned it a couple of times. Do you listen, are you listening, everybody? That's so important. Do you believe one saved always saved? Well, in the context of the argument that you hear people bring that forth. I don't even like the question due to the context of the argument. There are people who will say, oh, so do you believe that you can lose your salvation? Or do you believe one saved always saved? I don't know what that person means when they ask the question, or do you? What do they mean? So let's just go for the throat on this. How about this? One saved always saved if you're saved. How about that? How about, in fact, let's make it even more clear. Jesus said to Nicodemus, unless you're born again, you will not see the kingdom of heaven. So it's clear when Jesus said you've got to be born from above Nicodemus, you've been once born of the earth. But now you need a second birth, the birth that comes from above. So I'll put it to you this way. If you've been born again, you will forever be born again. Because there's no passage of Scripture nor verse that says you can be unborn again. Isn't that great? In that up, God commits no abortions in his family. The question today is, what spirit lives in you? That's the challenge today. That's what Paul the Apostle is defining to the Romans. Number one, we look at this. You fall into one of these categories. Number one, there are those who are not saved, and they know that they're not saved because they do not believe in the need to be saved. These are they who are in a state of condemnation according to the Bible. They don't feel it. They don't think it. They don't understand that the Bible says they're in a state of condemnation. What does condemnation means? It means that they're just basically breathing air until eternity comes. And their destination is not heaven if you know what I mean. But they don't care. They don't believe in any of that. Number two, some are saved, and they celebrate having the full assurance of their salvation. They know that they are living in an active state of grace with God, and they know that they are securing Jesus Christ alone. I am behind door number two. That's my life. I'm an income poop. I'm a sinner saved by the grace of God. But here's what's true about my life is number two. I'm saved. I celebrate that every day of my life. It's not that I wake up in the morning and I have to have little reminders. I don't have alarms that go off and say, Jack, remember you're saved. Jack, read the Bible. It's two o'clock. Read the Bible. Or whatever it is. I don't take Lisa's lipstick and read it on the mirror. Jack, remember this morning you're saved. No. You know what? I hear that the first thing I start to come to in the morning before my feet hit the ground. The thought of my relationship with God is already in my head. And I celebrate that. You want to know why it's not human. It's of God. Listen, when God forgives me of what I did in the past and what I think in my head still to this day, and He still loves me, oh, I want to celebrate His grace, oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not out running around and sinning up the town. I don't have to. I could have one wondering thought that would be bad enough to put Christ on the cross. But now I know, oh, God, please forgive me of that thought or of that temptation. Lord, I entertain that and I, it's wrong, forgive me. You died for that. Number three, some are in fact saved. Listen, this describes a lot of people, by the way, unnecessarily. Some are in fact saved, but they are emotionally insecure and they're salvation in Christ. Their souls are unnecessarily fearful. They are restless and often troubled, even though they are secure in Christ, yet they fail to enjoy Him. If you were to ask them, do you love God? They'd say yes. Did Jesus die in the cross for your sins? Yes. But they're so burdened by their past, they never escape the shell, the prison of what they once were. They're saved. They're going to heaven. Their names are written down in the Lamb's book of life, but the past weighs them down. They can't get past it. And listen, I have a good word for you today. God wants you to leave the past and the past. He wants you to know something. Stop flogging yourself over the things that you cannot remedy. That's why Jesus went to the cross. Trust Him, rejoice in Him, celebrate your salvation. Number four, some are not saved, but think they are saved. This is probably the next definition or perhaps the biggest definition of the common American today or Westerner. They are not saved, but they think they are saved. They have convinced themselves of their assurance of salvation based upon another gospel, in other words, a different gospel. They don't have a belief that's biblically rooted. They have a belief maybe in morality, maybe in their religion, maybe it's denominationalism, maybe, well, my grandfather was a preacher, my father was a preacher, my sons are preachers. I'm fine. That's dangerous. It's based upon another gospel, meaning or understanding thus their assurance is a false assurance. There are some people who say, I'm a Christian, and then if you watch their lives in some way, shape and form, the week that they live out after making the proclamation just begins to undo what they say with their mouth. Does that make sense, everybody? It's a very, very common. It prevails. It's unfortunate, but it's true. Number one point today is this, what spirit lives in you? It's found in verse 9 and it's this, is it the spirit of comfort? Will you write that down in your notes? Is it the spirit of comfort? Because the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit being the great comforter. What does that mean? That means in life, no matter what's going on. You and I may spike as the bad news arrives. Are we here? We get the phone call and there's that instantaneous rush of, oh no! And then we pull back. God begins to minister to us and he begins to comfort us with truth and with verses and scripture and revelations of his nature from the Word of God and we begin to be comforted. I want to ask you, you ask yourself, what spirit lives inside of you? When you actually put your finger on a supernatural power that you lean upon on the inside of your life and it's not you, you know it's not you. Jesus promised over and over again as we shall see that the Holy Spirit has been given to comfort us and we see it manifested in three ways. Number one in verse 9, we see that he is the Holy Spirit who confirms. So you're asking, is he the spirit who confirms? So the spirit of God starts out in the life of the believer, bringing them comfort. You're now in the family of God. And then the next thing he does, he starts to confirm your relationship with God. New believers can give you this in graphic detail. It's beautiful. Listen, are you an older Christian? Find a new Christian to hang out with. You know like, you know, an old dog, you get a puppy to help out the old dog. It's pretty cool to hang around new believers because they're on fire. And sometimes us older saints, we kind of get a little stiff, you know. And it's great to get a puppy, so to speak. Yes, somebody, you know, what are you so excited about? I just accepted Christ last week. Now don't you ever dare say to them, no, just calm down. No, no, no, no, no, we need to be like them. We need to get pumped up. And their faith is so new and so fresh, and it's exhilarating. Why? What's going on? They're experiencing those wonderful moments, very much like birth if you think about it. You know, the baby's brought into this world, all attentions on the baby, the spotlights on the baby, the baby's coming out. There's the baby, the doctor, I don't think they slap babies anymore, do they? Remember, they might know I'm talking about it. Didn't you get slapped when you came into this world? I'm sure I got slapped when I came into this world. But everybody's goading over the baby and so they should and they're taking pictures and they're doing this and all this kind of stuff and it's baby, baby, baby, baby. And then after a while, you know, especially when you have your first baby, it's all baby. And then you have your second baby, it's like, who are you? Third kid, do you live next door? You know, it's kind of funny, but when you're born into the kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit is comforting you and he's telling you things like this, Jack, I have forgiven you your sins, the life that you lived before coming to me, I've washed it all away. And God's word speaks and says, as far as the east is from the west, I've removed your sins from you. I've taken them and put them in the bottom of the sea, say it to Lord. And it's like, yes. And he comforts you. How does he do that? The Holy Spirit using the Word of God to confirm your relationship with him. This is in verse 9, opening up, it says, but you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. Note the great contrast. Living a life of the flesh, fleshly appetites, the life of this world, or living the life now for the Spirit of God and the things that are in God's Word and the things that God wants to do. There's a great division and God confirms that to us. I firmly believe in what I'm about to say because of this verse right here. I don't think anybody walks around confused or deluded about what Spirit dwells within them. I really don't. The Bible says these things have been written that you might know that you have eternal life. That's what the Bible says. And I believe what the Bible says. And God's Spirit will speak to you. And he'll comfort you with his Word. And chapter 4, verse 8, tells us about this distinction. He says in chapter 4, verse 8, indeed, when you did not know God, do you remember when you didn't know God? You served those which by nature are not God's. Isn't that an interesting comment? He said that is so ridiculous. Who worships God's today? Everybody who doesn't know God. You say, well I'm an atheist, oh boy, you worship all kinds of God's. Most of all, you worship the God of your supposed intellect. Well, I used to believe in God and then I went to college. And what happened there? Well, I got educated beyond your intelligence. Think about it. Going to college cannot make you wise. Can you imagine going to a university? Listen, if USC could make people wise, they'd really have a lot of people going there. Think about it. The system is not knowledge. And today you've got to ask, what knowledge are you learning? Well, gravity, you know, we're not exactly sure. You want to be sure? Climb the telephone pole. Now I'm not here, not on campus, somewhere else. Gravity is crystal clear. The laws of nature are solid. Why? Because the God of the Bible says, I made him. He's a God of absolutes. He confirms things to us by distinction. Is your life being led by the Holy Spirit of God? It's very simple to answer the question, or is it being led by you? And your appetite, that's what Paul is drawing the line right through. There's a division. He says, you're no longer in the flesh. It's a beautiful statement that he's making to the Roman believers. You guys aren't led by the flesh anymore. And they all would have said, hey, man, but no doubt it's human nature. There's always among those who believe in God, those who think they believe in God. There are those who are among believers who are not believers. Maybe they might enjoy the morality of what people of faith bring or whatever it might be. But a real Christian lives and moves and dwells in their reality of the realm of the Spirit. Now look, people, let's be honest. As Christians, we need to be careful, more than ever right now, for this one reason. We need to be careful how we witness to people, not if, of course we are to witness. But when we walk around, we live in such a post-Christian America that you cannot talk Christianese any longer publicly, nobody knows what you're talking about. In fact, you go outside, listen, you go to a Ram's game or you go to a Laker game and you say, God bless America and people are going to say, which one and which one? Because this guy over here, he believes in 25 gods. This guy believes in an infinite amount of gods, which God are you talking about? We once knew, now we don't. But somebody leans on some other source of identity, that's a God, money, that's a God. You can make it a God, sex, people have made it. I think that's the preferred God of the nation now, sexuality, power. Those are gods, it's funny because in our 21st century, we would never say that those are gods. And yet, isn't it interesting that every previous generation since the beginning of time had idols and icons of gods of power, gods of drunkenness, gods of pornography, did you know that? We may not have statues, but there may be a God that has taken the place of the Almighty God, the real God, the living God. No, listen, we're not in the flesh anymore, we've come out of that. And now we're in the spirit that his God is working and living his life through us. This flesh, think about this flesh. The Bible talks about our flesh. We look at it, look the first thing you did this morning, you got up. What'd you do? Right? Oh, man. You washed your face, showered whatever you did, you shaved it or whatever, and we're body fixated. You know, it's like, okay, body, body, body. But listen, the Bible says God made us body, soul, and spirit. But if we live in the flesh, we're focused on the body part. And it just goes downhill from there if we make that our identity. Listen, as a believer, your identity is in Jesus, and the body part of who we are is just one-third of our existence, body, soul, and spirit. The soul is your mind. The spirit is the new you, the born again you. And it's remarkable. Our God changes the way that we think, because that changes the way we speak while using these bodies. Watch this. I'll prove it to you. I think this is very fun. Now, please pretend you're in awe of this, because I've been studying this. So I've been marinating in it, so I don't know. But this is just a body. What you have right now is just a body. Nothing that is physical can express anything meaningful. Do you understand that? If my mind or my soul was not here right now, I'd just be like this. If my spirit was gone, I'd be like this. Okay, you would think two-thirds of me would render me like this. But if my soul starts to think, watch this, because it's invisible. You mean your brain? No, that's eight pounds of meat. I mean, you know what I'm talking about? It's such a brain. Your brain is what the mind uses. Put your finger on that. Can we like crack open your head? There goes his mind. No, the consciousness of who you are operates in the mind. Watch what it does. See, I know what I'm going to do right now. How do I know that? Because I thought about it. And in a second, I'm going to employ my brain to communicate to the rest of my body. So I have a thought, and it's this. I'm going to now, number one, tell you that I'm going to raise my right hand. So what is telling you right now that I'm going to raise my right hand? If you say my mouth, you're wrong. If you say even my brain, you're wrong. I have decided to raise my right hand. That consciousness is going to employ my brain in its mechanics. CS Lewis called us the human machine for good reason. The brain says, all right, everybody listen up. He's giving us tons of warning. We're going to get a request any second to raise the hand. And so I raised my hand. This just did what I first thought. I want you to stop and think for a moment that you are far deeper and mean far more than the physical existence that you have. You are someone who will live forever. And heaven the Bible says, are in hell. You'll live forever. The choice is yours. Christ has bought the ticket for you to go to heaven. But by default, thanks to Mom and Dad, Adam and Eve, we're on a default path to hell. That's why Christ went to the cross. That's why the Bible, from the beginning, announced to us redemption. And the beautiful, awesome thing is this. That the Holy Spirit dwells in us as believers. You either know that or you do not. Don't guess. Oh, do not guess. This Jack Kibb's podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibb.com to learn more and stay connected.