The Revealer and Sealer

Q: What does the Bible say about the sealing work of the Holy Spirit?

The sealing work of the Holy Spirit preserves and protects the truth of God in the hearts of believers, confirming their salvation. The sealing work of the Holy Spirit, as discussed in the sermon, serves to preserve and protect the truth of God's character and salvation in the hearts of believers. This sealing represents God's commitment to His people, ensuring that the truth of His Word remains with them. The Holy Spirit brings revelation of this truth, helping believers to continually seek answers to what God's Word says. In Ephesians 1, we see that upon hearing the Gospel of salvation, believers are sealed by the Holy Spirit, marking them as belonging to God eternally. This gives assurance that their faith is rooted in a durable covenant established by God.

Q: How do we know the atonement of Christ is sufficient?

The atonement of Christ is sufficient because He fully paid the penalty for sin and reconciled believers to God once and for all. The sufficiency of Christ's atonement is highlighted throughout the sermon, emphasizing that Jesus Christ's sacrifice was complete and effective for the redemption of His people. The notion that the atonement has been applied to believers signifies that all of God's wrath was poured out on Christ, ensuring that nothing remains for those He saves. Romans 5 encapsulates this by declaring that while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through Christ's death, affirming that His sacrifice achieved complete justification for believers. This grounding in Scripture bolsters the understanding that we receive joy and peace in the atonement, fully assured that God does not demand further payment for our sins.

Q: Why is understanding God's covenant important for Christians?

Understanding God's covenant is vital as it reveals His unchanging promise and character towards His people, ensuring their salvation. Understanding God's covenant is crucial for Christians because it demonstrates the unbreakable nature of God's promises and the assurance of salvation. As outlined in the sermon, the eternal covenant enacted through the blood of Jesus guarantees that believers are justified and eternally secured in Christ. This covenant reflects God's sovereignty in choosing a people for Himself, thus establishing a relationship that is rooted not in human effort but in divine grace. In knowing the covenantal nature of God's relationship with His people, Christians find comfort and strength when they face spiritual storms, knowing they are anchored to the Rock who does not fail.

Q: What is the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer?

The Holy Spirit reveals truth and seals believers, affirming their identity as children of God. The role of the Holy Spirit, as expounded in the sermon, is multifaceted, involving both the revelation of God's truth and the sealing of believers for their eternal assurance. The Holy Spirit imparts wisdom and understanding, allowing believers to comprehend the depths of their salvation and covenant relationship with God. Moreover, the Holy Spirit's sealing function signifies that believers are marked as God's possession, protected from spiritual adversities. This work ensures that they are kept in faith until the day of redemption, enabling them to cling to the hope found in Christ. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is not only a guide but also a source of comfort and assurance throughout the believer's journey.

Okay, I want to read a verse out of the Old Testament for you before we go back and spend a little bit more time contemplating the work of the Holy Spirit. The churches of God raise up a banner. We raise up a banner, the banner of all the true churches of God is the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. And listen to, turn with me to Isaiah chapter 59. I want us to.

We talk about the eternal covenant in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no salvation outside of the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no understanding of the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ unless there's an understanding of eternal union and communion with him.

And so we, We've been talking about the foundation that's been laid. Build yourselves up on your most holy faith is to have a foundation upon which you build and build and build. And we know that the foundation of God stands sure. And the foundation of God is a rock. and the foundation of man is sand and there is a storm that comes and in the mercy of the Lord that storm comes to his people in this world and they have their house of sand stripped away from them and they are left clinging to a rock. that never moves.

So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. We're lifting up the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ against the enemy and all of his schemes.

We're lifting up the standard just like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. We're lifting up that serpent so people can look and live. That's the standard, isn't it? Christ crucified. The Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified is the standard. And the Spirit of the Lord lifts it up against him. Don't you love that? This is the part of this foundation.

And the Redeemer, the Redeemer, shall come to Zion and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord. My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord from henceforth and forever. That is the Word that we have in our laps, isn't it? This is the Word of God Almighty. And we were speaking earlier about the fact that the Blessed Holy Spirit is both the revealer and He is the sealer.

You know what sealing is. You go to the shop and you buy your gherkins or your sliced cucumbers or something in a glass jar, and it's got a lid on it these days, it's got a lid on it, and in the middle of the lid is this little indentation, a little bit. And what happens if that is not sealed? Sealing is a really simple thing, isn't it? God seals his people. He seals them in to preserve them. He seals them in to protect them. He seals the truth of who he is to the hearts of his people. He seals his word to them. So they continually go back and they're just asking one question about everything. What does God say? What does God say? What is the truth? What does God say?

We build ourselves up. That building yourselves up is to have this foundation, and you just keep building on that foundation, and you keep going back, and what's the foundation? The foundation is the very character of God, the eternal covenant that before the foundation of the world, God the Father, elected a people out of Adam's race, he put them into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ promised to be the redeemer, that we've just read about, the surety, the one who takes full responsibility for all of their righteousness before God, takes full responsibility for all of their sins before God.

He takes full responsibility to return them to the Father, holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight, because his sight's the only sight that matters. His sight's the only sight that matters. There comes a day when, and it should be now, I pray that it is now for us all, where it's God's sight and God's opinion and God's word that matters above all. And the Holy Spirit is the witness to that and the Holy Spirit is given the glorious task of taking all of that and revealing it and sealing it to the hearts of his people. that they're sealed.

What a glorious thing to think of, isn't it? All those people put in their jar and then it's sealed. In the old days when we used to do bottling of things, which is gone from our land pretty much these days, but they used to pop, don't they? They used to pop when the seal was set. And you know what it's like when you unseal them these days, there's a little pop. And that's the work, the blessed work of the Holy Spirit that we read about in Ephesians chapter 1.

He having the final glory, isn't it? in whom you trusted. After that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. We're declaring a gospel of your salvation. The gospel is a person. We're just describing and declaring the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ as the blessed Holy Spirit bore witness to him. This is the witness that he brings into the hearts of these people. He is a revealer. He's a revealer of the true and only Lord Jesus Christ.

And I love using all of his titles because God gave them to him. He's Lord, which means he's absolutely sovereign over everything. I get troubled these days when people talk about Jesus because when they talk about Jesus they don't give him his titles and they don't give him the honour of him being Lord. He's made to be a little bit like us but a little bit better. He is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the man. He is a man. He is Christ.

We have the truth of who Christ is, the truth of Christ's atonement, the truth of Christ's enthronement. And the truth is that word of God that we read about, in whom you also trusted after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that you believed, you were sealed. There is a revelation from God. Listen to what he says earlier in Ephesians chapter one.

His prayer for them. He heard about their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and your love for all the saints. It was shed abroad in your hearts. The love of God is shed abroad and if the love of God is shed abroad to us, to him, then it's shed abroad to all that's in him. We love our brothers and sisters and we love other people.

And he says, I cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. And listen to it. This is what you hear. This is how you hear.

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us would who believe, according to the working of his mighty power. God the Father's mighty power, God the Son's mighty power, and God the Holy Spirit's mighty power. And what is the exceeding, I'm sorry, in which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places. It requires nothing other than the almighty power of God. to actually bring us to a place where we believe the truth. We hear the word of truth.

Every time I read that word in verse 19, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, the NIV Bible, which I took with me to India, and it was I had to use it for five years because of the courses I was teaching over there and the exams and things that people had to do. But I used to do some study with a friend of mine who did a PhD in New Testament Greek and he'd never seen an NIV Bible, even though they were scattered all over the world like cow turds. But anyway, he read that. And we used to do studies in Greek together. And he read that and he said that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened is an extraordinarily special Greek expression.

It's only used a few times. And it means it's something that God has done and even God himself cannot undo it. He doesn't change God, so you can understand. Anyway, he said to me, he said, the only possible way that you could translate that the way they translated it in the NIV Bible was through absolute deliberate deceit. My NIV Bible, I've still got it at home, I've just got pages with underlined words in them where I've scripted. written about every time we did Bible study, the NIV was just proved to be just lies that were made by men. Listen to what we read, isn't it? You've heard the word of truth. The word of truth is the Lord Jesus Christ and he is revealed in his word.

He reveals and then he seals. He seals it to the hearts of his people, just like it's preserved in those jars. It's sealed to the hearts of his people. I love what Isaiah said. You probably know these verses well because we quote some of them. This is God's declaration about hearing the word of truth. He says, to the law and the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in him. We read in Isaiah 4 earlier about that light.

He says, Earlier on he says, bind up the testimony. You take the testimony of God and you put it, just as you go to the jewellers and they have all those very precious jewels in a velvet bag with a drawstring on top, you bind up the testimony of God. You treat the testimony of God as something that's incredibly precious. Bind up the testimony, seal the law. among my disciples, and I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look to him.

Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and wonders." Don't you love that? All of God's children are for signs and wonders. When he seals them up, their signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts with dwelleth in Zion. I'd like you to go back with me when we think of this ceiling. We read in John chapter 14 that not only is the ceiling something incredibly precious, You put valuable things and you seal them away and they're protected from the things of this world.

But also, the seal in olden days was a wax seal. There used to be one in our old house. I don't know who got it and where it went, but there was one because our family had a, in very, very olden days, they had a crest and you would melt some wax onto a letter and then you, they still do it on wedding invitations and things, don't they? And then you actually, you used to dip this crest, family crest, into the wax and that sealed it. But the idea of sealing is, as we read in John chapter 14, is that the sealing is the impression of God in the hearts of people.

What is the hope of glory? It is Christ in you. It is this Christ in you. I've been so moved by these verses in Romans 5 that I just want to, as we come to have the Lord's Supper, I pray that we would be enabled of God to eat and drink in faith. And that's what it is to eat and drink worthily of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's those verses of solemn warning in 1 Corinthians 11, isn't it? that we are declaring. The Lord said, take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of me.

In the same manner also he took the cup and when he had supped saying, this is the cup, this cup is the New Testament, is the new covenant. in my blood, this do you as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Because for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till he come." We're showing his death. We're declaring his death.

Turn with me back to Romans chapter 5. I just wanted to see some of the the glorious things that are said in here. And we read it through as Paul would have it written, but I'd love for us to go back and look at it from verse 11 and look back at the glorious things that come with this atonement. In verse 11 it says, but we also joy.

We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the atonement. The atonement is received. It's revealed and it's sealed in its reception to the hearts of God. God alone is the revealer and the sealer of this atonement. And we joy in God. Do you enjoy in an atonement, the atonement? Listen to it, it's not an atonement, it is the atonement.

I was saying to some folks at the break that I have listened to two sermons on 1 Corinthians 15. I've listened to many of them over the years because those verses are a wonderful and extraordinary declaration of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. become so annoying and so abundantly clear and so repetitious that I expect it now, is that these people will use those verses and they will never ever say clearly what happened at the cross. They want to leave it always such that if people want to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for all humanity on the cross and made salvation possible for all humanity on the cross, then you could believe that. It's just extraordinary. One of the things that I love about the words in 1 Corinthians 15, it says, For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which also I received. This is the receiving of the atonement. How that Christ died for our sins.

These people never define the our and they never define The four, and they never talk about how that Christ died. They don't define any of those things and they skip over it. That word four means one who stands over, who bends over, one that he would defend or shield. Don't you love that?

What's the word atonement mean in the Old Testament? It means a covering. He covers his people and they hide under the shadow of his wings and he covers them and all of the wrath of God falls on him and falls on them. They're crucified with him. It's not rocket science and people who are not clear are not clear for a purpose. They're not clear.

Listen to what we do, what God's children do. We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. To receive the atonement is to rejoice in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ did it all and he did it for his people and he did it successfully and he paid the price in full and there's nothing left for them to pay.

Isn't that simple? That's what it means. That's what the word means. They used to write it across the bills in the old days. You owe someone $100. You come and pay your $100. They would write that word. It is finished across the bottom of the bill. And what does religion say? You've got to keep doing your little bit. You've got to keep doing your little bit. That's not the atonement. This is the atonement that we receive that says it's finished and that's why we can rejoice in it. I can rejoice in an atonement which is completely finished and perfectly applied.

I can rejoice, I can shelter in that blood. That blood, that blood purges, that blood cleanses. That blood is the singing of heaven right now. He's redeemed us, washed us in his blood. He's made us kings and priests under God. He did it all. This is the atonement that we receive. We rejoin, we rejoice in it. Listen to what he goes on to say in the previous verse. If you go back up, we shall be saved by his life. That's the atonement, we're saved by his life.

And we're reconciled to God. When we were enemies, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God. Not when we did something, we were reconciled before we ever did anything. We were reconciled at the cross. We were reconciled to God. We're just declaring what God has done. This is the atonement that is received.

Listen to what he says in verse nine. How much more then, being justified. That word justified is in the passive tense and it's a completed activity. What is it to be justified? This is the atonement that comes from the love of God shed abroad in the hearts of his people. This is the only atonement that saves. To be justified is to be declared in the court of God to have never sinned. God laid on him the iniquity of us all, all of it. elated on him. It cannot, in the justice of God, be in two places at the same time.

Now by being justified, shall we be saved from wrath through him? This is the atonement that we've received. We're justified. Justified how? We're justified by his blood. This is the atonement we've received. This is what we're declaring when we have the Lord's Supper.

Verse eight, but God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. I love that word, commended. He commends his love. It means to place together, to sit in the same place, revealed and sealed, to put together in combination. He combines his love for us in the death of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

And that for in Romans 5 is the same for that we read about in 1 Corinthians 15. This means to stand over and share. What a glorious little word. It should be a big word in our thinking, isn't it? This is the atonement that we received. Christ died for us. Listen to verse six.

For when we were yet without strength, without strength, we were enemies. Without strength, in due time, at the perfect time of God's appointing, Christ died for the ungodly. Ungodly means someone who doesn't serve. It means someone who doesn't worship God.

This is the atonement that we receive. This is the atonement that we rejoice in. We might start at the beginning and read down to these next ones because they fit better this way. But therefore, verse one, therefore being justified, having been justified, having been declared to be without sin, to have never sinned by faith, We have peace with God.

Faith there is a noun. It's not our activity of faith, it's the object of faith. Don't you love that? It's not what I do, it's what Christ's done for me. That's exactly what the verse is saying, isn't it? He was delivered for our offences and he's raised again for our justification.

Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. By faith we have peace with God. I can eat and drink and worship because I have peace with God. God's at peace with me. Even the sound of that word is amazing in this messed up world that we live in, isn't it? Peace. Peace with each other. Don't you love the thought of it? Peace with each other. Peace within families. Peace within communities. Peace within nations. What a wonderful word. We have peace with God. In this world we're going to be with promised troubles, but we have peace with God. God's at peace with me. Don't you love that? God's at peace with me. I'm at peace with God. Oh, I wish I could live it. I can talk about it, but I'd love to live it.

And listen to this, by whom also, this is the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith. What's faith there? It's a noun. It's the faith of the faithful one. Our faith rests in him who is faithful. We have access by faith into this grace, this particular grace, this particular atonement, this particular saviour, wherein we stand. What's the foundation? We come back and we stand here again and again and again when the waves of sin and the waves of despair and the waves of trouble wash over us, we stand there. We come back to that foundation. This is building yourself up in your most holy faith.

We stand and rejoice in hope. in the glory of God. Christian hope is not some expectation about something that might happen in the future. Christian hope is an absolutely sure hope. It's something that's certain and sealed by God already. Not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience. and patience experience, and experience hope.

And hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. There's no knowing God without the blessed work of the Holy Spirit of God. There's no knowing the love of God without the Holy Spirit bringing us the love of God. There's no knowing this atonement.

We receive the atonement. We joy in God. through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. Moses took that book, he took the blood of sprinkling, and he sprinkled the book and the utensils, and he sprinkled all the people. The blood has to be applied. The love of God has to be shed abroad in our hearts. I pray that we would pray that the Lord God would cause us to be washed in his blood, to be redeemed by his blood, to stand in this faith, to stand in this Lord Jesus Christ, to love this gospel, to love this particular love, and to love the saviour whose blood is precious.

We joy in God. through our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm at peace with him, he's at peace with me, and I can rejoice. I can rejoice. By whom we have now received the atonement. There's only one atonement. There's only one atonement. There's only one atonement that speaks of love, that speaks of peace, that speaks of reconciliation. There's only one atonement that takes enemies and ungodly and those without any strength at all, and sprinkles that blood on their hearts while they're in that state. Don't we have a gospel that's worthy of all telling? Worthy, so worthy of our Saviour. Let's pray.

The Revealer and Sealer

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about the sealing work of the Holy Spirit?

How do we know the atonement of Christ is sufficient?

Why is understanding God's covenant important for Christians?

What is the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer?

Sermon Transcript

About Angus Fisher

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The Revealer and Sealer

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about the sealing work of the Holy Spirit?

How do we know the atonement of Christ is sufficient?

Why is understanding God's covenant important for Christians?

What is the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer?

Sermon Transcript

About Angus Fisher

Comments

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