The Holy Spirit’s Role
What sanctification of the Holy Spirit involves: Holy Spirit is active in our new birth in Christ and gives us assurance of belonging to Jesus. He guides, convicts, converts and prays for us.
Transcript
Alright, thank you very much. And hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? Yes this is your friend Bob Cook, and I’m glad to be back with you. What a joy to be with you and the Word of God. Some of you I know live at quite a distance from where I’m seated. But when I open my Bible and I greet you by way of radio, the miles drop away and we’re together with our blessed Lord and His inherent, infallible, inspired Word the Bible — the best kind of togetherness this side of heaven.
We are looking at 1 Peter — I was going to walk around in that book for a while after having completed our comments on 1 Thessalonians. And he says, “I’m writing to the people who are elect.” And that, I have reminded you that word elect — eclectois — ‘called out’ — it comes from the, the Greek verb kaleo, ‘to call’ and little prefix ‘ecc — out. Called out ones — elect.
Now Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the people who are called out — elect — who were scattered abroad throughout Pontus, Galatia, and so on. So wherever you are, wherever you are, before you talk about the circumstances, realize that where you are, and what you are, and what you’re experiencing, even though it is under the heading of ‘scattered abroad’ was it as here, is part of God’s blessed, wonderful call to your life.
“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,” that’s what he, we were talking the last time we got together. Now he says, “Through sanctification of the Holy Spirit” — sanctification of the Spirit. Well, now what does that actually involve? Well it involves a good deal. The Holy Spirit is active in convicting you when He is come. Jesus said, “He shall convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come.”
He’s, he is active obviously in the matter of regeneration — being born again. He said, Jesus said, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Remember that? So He’s active in, in the new birth. And then He’s active in assuring you that, that you are a Christian. The Spirit witnesses with our Spirit, that we are the children of God. And if children then, heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — everything you have belongs to Jesus, and everything He has belongs to you, Halleluiah! (Laughs) Oh that’s great, you know.
Ah, so He’s, He’s active in assuring you that you do belong to the Lord Jesus. He is — I’m just ticking off these things as they, as they come to me from memory here, He’s active in helping you a day by day, and guiding you. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God,” Paul says in Romans 8, “they are the children of God.” He guides you step by step. Jesus said, “When He the Spirit of come is, Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you into all truth and bring to your remembrance all things whatsoever I have said unto you.”
So he guides the believer, He convicts you, He converts you, He assures you that you belong to God, He guides you. What else does He do? He prays through you according to the will of God. “We know not what we should ask for as we pray for as we ought. But the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groaning’s which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the heart,” — that’s God the Father — “God the Father knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit because He, the Spirit, maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And John says, “And we know that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. And if we know that He hear us, we know that we have the petitions”, have — ‘h a v e’, present tense — “have the petitions that we desired of Him.”
So praying in the will of God and getting answers to prayer is part of the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. He fills your heart with love. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us.” The Holy Spirit. “The love of Christ constraineth us,” he says. He’s, the Spirit of God is the one that produces that kind of constraining, motivating love in your life. Just a little, just a little taste of what the, the writer here means: ‘Sanctification of the Spirit’. The word ‘sanctify’ means set aside for God to use, that’s what that means. “Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth. Christ is made unto us,” — 1 Corinthians 1:30, “Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification, redemption.” I lifted that very promise up to God today as I prayed before going on the air. And I said in effect, “Lord Jesus I want to receive by faith from you, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”
Wisdom isknowing what to do with what you know. Righteousness is being good spontaneously, not just simply by an effort now and then. Sanctification is being set apart for God’s use without being pious and super holy. And redemption is wrapping up the whole package of life and making it an adventure, a miracle, day by day with Christ. And Jesus does that for you as you take it from Him by faith.
Christ suffered for us that He might sanctify and cleanse the Church with the washing of water by the Word. And then there’s a, there’s a sense in which the Holy Spirit of God helps you to, to do something for yourself. “If a man therefore purge himself,” — this is 2 Timothy 2:21, — “purge himself, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and worthy of the master’s use.” That meet for the master’s use, an interesting word éfchristos means ‘easy to use’. Some people are hard for God to use ‘cause there’re too many rough edges. Easy for God to use and prepared to every good work.
So then we come down to 1 Peter 1:2. “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience.” Now how does this work in daily life? See this, this, this matter of elect, it’s according to, it’s according to the knowledge of God the Father. That means right down along the line of… And then it’s through that, that means ‘method’, doesn’t it? If something is done through something else, eh? It’s, it means, it means ‘this is the way it is done’, all right? Through sanctification of the Spirit. Now the Greek doesn’t use the word dia which ordinarily means ‘through it’, he uses en — e-n — means ‘in’ — in as ‘part of’. Now what’s he getting at?
Your whole life as it reflects the plan of God, now watch this, I think it’s important for you to get a hold of it. Your whole life as it reflects the plan of God in His foreknowledge, He planned for you didn’t He? He says, “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of good, not of evil, that to give you a desired end.” God has plans for you from all eternity, all right. But your whole life as it reflects the plan of God is in, ‘wrapped up in’ in another words, ‘part of’, ‘inextricably entwined with’, all right? In the work of the Holy Spirit, in hagiasmos, in holiness of the Holy Spirit.
Now what does that mean to me day by day? That means that when you gave your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit came to dwell within you. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His,” the Bible says. “What know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which ye have of God, and you’re not your own for you’re bought with a price,” Paul says to the Corinthians. And this and many other passages could be elicited just to remind us that the Spirit of God comes to dwell within the believer the moment you say it, “Now He’s there.”
The process then of working out the plan of God from all eternity, planned for you, depends on yielding your life, definitely, deliberately, consciously, yielding yourself to the Holy Spirit of God. Let me ask you something? Have you ever deliberately said, “Spirit of God, I yield myself to Thee in this situation. Take control.” You ever done that? Oh you say, ‘Yeah.” Do you pray to the Holy Spirit? Why not? He’s God, just as much God as God the Father, or God the Son. Each member of the trinity has separate functions in the trinity. But we have, we have a one God three persons, right? And so you can talk to the Holy Spirit. Yes, you can yield yourself deliberately to the Spirit of God. And His business is to honor the Lord Jesus.
“When He is come He shall not speak of Himself, he shall speak of Me,” it says. So, Jesus is honored and glorified when you yield yourself to the Holy Spirit of God. He then sets you aside in a very special manner for God’s special use within the parameters of that eternal plan that was set out for you. One plan for one person.
My father, before the depression put an end to that particular job, was in charge of all of the blueprints in a company in Toledo, called ‘Toledo Machines and Tool’. His job was to take care of the, well you might call it the blue, the blueprint library — where they stored all of the specifications for all the machines that they built.
Now and again an order would come for a repair part for some machine. They use to build these gigantic presses that would stand two or three stories high, and they would exert hundreds of tons of pressure upon the metal to, to crank out fenders and frames and so on for the automotive industry — that was the type of , of machinery that was built, all of it outsize, gigantic stuff, doing big work. But all done to very delicate tolerances and specifications.
And so if an order came through either to duplicate a certain hydraulic press or else to, to build a repair part, what did you have to do? You had to go into the blue print room and ask Charlie Cook, “I have to have blueprint number ‘so-and-so’ for this machine.” And then he would look it up in the index, find where it was, and pull it out. And there it was — the exact specifications. And you, you couldn’t, you couldn’t repair that thing, you couldn’t duplicate that part without having reference to the preplanned specifications, you see where I am going, don’t you?
The blessed Holy Spirit of God has constant reference to the divine blueprint for your life. I know sometimes it, it doesn’t seem to make sense, life doesn’t. I’ve been there just as you have, no doubt. I’ve looked up and said, “God what, what is this all about?” Sometimes it doesn’t seem make sense. But always and always you my dear child of God are part of God’s divine master blueprint for your life. Trust him and let the Holy Spirit who dwells within you honor the Lord Jesus in working it out.
Father God today, let the Holy Spirit work out your divine plan in our lives, I ask in Jesus name. Amen.
Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!
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