If you look back over this morning
with me in Romans chapter 8, I appreciate Brother Clarence
reading my text for me. Now seriously, if you noticed,
you won't notice this if you don't stop and read this slowly.
I know I never did. But this really is so much about
the work of the Spirit. Romans chapter 8. Let me remind
you of some places that Clarence read to us in this chapter. Some
things that said concerning Him. In verse 2, the Apostle refers
to Him as the Spirit of Life. The Spirit of Life in Christ
Jesus. The Lord Jesus said, There shall
be in you a river, rivers of living waters. That's the Spirit
of life. In verse 9, He calls him the
Spirit, and then He refers to him as the Spirit of God. And
then He refers to him in the same verse as the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit is the third person
of the Blessed Trinity, the Sacred Trinity. God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Spirit. They're one. One God. The Spirit
is God. The Spirit is Christ. The Spirit. And then in verse 15, he refers
to Him as the Spirit of Adoption. You have received the Spirit
of Adoption. Children of God are legally sons
of God. In the court of heaven, they're
adopted. But it's more than that. They
have the spirit of adoption. God has sent forth the spirit
of His Son into our hearts, crying, Father, Father. He's the spirit
of adoption. And then in verse 9, He tells
the believers, and this is an amazing thing here, He said,
you are in the Spirit. And then He turns around and
says, the Spirit dwells in you. You are in Him, you are not in
the flesh, and the Spirit is in you. Now this reminds us of
that prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ. He prayed this way. Listen
to this in John 17. He said, "...neither pray I for
these alone, these apostles, but for them who shall believe
on Me through their word, that they may be one, as Thou, Father,
art in Me, and I in Thee, that they may be one in Us." They
are in Us. Paul said, you're not in the
flesh, you're in the Spirit. Being in the Spirit, we're in
this triune God. They are in us. But He didn't
stop there. The glory which you gave Me,
I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one,
I in them, and thou in Me. We're in the Spirit, we're in
the Father, we're in the Son, and the Spirit's in us. The Father's
in us. The Spirit is in us. And then
in verses 4 through verse 5, He tells us what a guide, what
a positive influence the Spirit of God is in our hearts and in
our lives. He said those that are in the
Spirit, those who are in Christ, mind the things of the Spirit. They're spiritually minded. They
obey the Spirit. He influences them. He guides
them. He sheds abroad the love of God
in our heart. What an influence that is! The
love of God, the love of Christ, constrains us. He's the teacher. He teaches us. He's the revealer. He reveals Christ to us. Our
need of Christ to us. He leads us and guides us. He
implants His graces in the heart, does He not? He does that. Of love, joy, Peace, faith, goodness,
gentleness, long-suffering. He influences us. He's the influencer. We mind the things of the Spirit. And then in verse 16, he says
something else about the Spirit. He bears witness with our spirit
that we are the sons of God. And he says it like this, He
Himself. Our version says Itself, but
it's Himself. Himself. He Himself bears witness
with our spirit. Now, you don't need me to tell
you that you're a child of God. You need more than that. I may
look at you and I say, Glenn, I have all the confidence in
the world in you, and I do, that you're a child of God. But you
need more than that. And we may have other evidences. We read the Scriptures. We attend
worship as we are this morning. We've been made new creatures.
We have morals. We have desires. We have love.
But you know, we even need more than that. What do we need? We need the Spirit Himself to
bear witness with our spirits, our hearts, that we are indeed
sons of God. And He doesn't do it audibly.
He doesn't speak to these ears. You don't hear His voice as you
hear me this morning. But He speaks to what? Our spirits. He's a spirit, and He speaks
to our spirit. And in verse 26, He says something
else about the Spirit, that He's our Helper. He calls Him a Helper. He helps our infirmities. He upholds us. You and I have
needs. Oh, so many needs that we have.
Heart needs. And one of the needs that we
have is somebody to help us to pray. We don't even know what
to pray for, how to ask, how to pray. But He helps our infirmities. He holds us up in prayer. David
said, Lord, uphold my goings in Your steps. And this is what
he was talking about. Give me the Spirit to help me
to pray. Uphold me in faith. Uphold me
in desires to pray. But he even goes further than
that, doesn't he? He says, He Himself makes intercession for
us with groanings which cannot be uttered." He's our heifer.
And then back in verse 11, he associates the Spirit with our
hope of the resurrection. If Christ's Spirit dwells in
you, He shall quicken your mortal bodies that dwelleth in you. We're the temple of the Holy
Spirit. He'll be the very one to raise
these bodies from the grave. He'll quicken you by His Spirit. Sometimes it's said that the
Father will raise us from the dead. God will do it. Sometimes
it's said that Christ will raise us from the dead. We'll hear
the voice of the Son of God and the grave will open and come
forth. But here it's the Spirit that will quicken us from the
dead. If we're alive and remain when the Lord comes, He'll change
these mortal bodies and they'll put on immortality. If you have
died and your bodies decayed in the ground, He'll raise you
and your corruptible body will put on incorruption. Who is going
to do that work? The mighty, sovereign Spirit,
the third person of the blessed Trinity. And knowing all of this
concerning the Holy Spirit, that He's the Spirit of life, That
He's the Revealer, He's the Teacher, He's our Helper. Knowing all
of these things, the Spirit of adoption that we've just read
about Him. Therefore, Paul comes here to
verse 12 and verse 13, and he says, Brethren, we're debtors.
We're debtors. We're not debtors to the flesh.
The flesh has got us into all kinds of trouble. But we're debtors
to the Spirit. We should never grieve the Holy
Spirit of God. He's everything to us, isn't
He? Never grieve Him. Always obey Him. Always be thanking
the Father that He sent Him to our hearts for the purposes that
we've read here in chapter 8. But something else that we learn
from this is this. We're reminded that the kingdom
of God is a spiritual kingdom. The kingdom that we are in is
not a physical kingdom. The kingdom of God is not meat
and drink, but righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy
Spirit. It is a spiritual kingdom. We
are reminded that our worship of God is a spiritual worship. They that worship God must worship
Him in spirit and in truth. Why? Because He is a spirit.
And how are we to worship God by His Spirit that He sent within
us? The service that we render to
the Lord Jesus Christ is a heart service. It's a heart service. You are the servants of Christ
doing the will of God from the heart. And the knowledge that
we have, it's a spiritual knowledge. Paul prayed for the Ephesians
that God would give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of him. I can teach you, but God has
to put it in your heart. It's a spiritual knowledge. So
according to chapter 8, to be a Christian is no less than the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart. That's what it
means to be a Christian. It's to be possessed of Him. It's to be led of Him. It's to
be taught of Him. It's to be helped by Him, by
this eternal, sovereign, Holy Spirit of God, the Son of God. And you know anything any short
of that is not Christian. You can't be a Christian apart
from the Holy Spirit. He said in verse 9, If any man
have not the Spirit of Christ, He is none of His. Have you ever heard somebody
say, you're saved, but you don't have the Spirit yet? You can't
be saved without the Spirit. You can't believe without the
Spirit. You can't know Christ without the Spirit. You can't
pray without the Spirit. We're nothing without His Spirit.
Without the Spirit of Christ, we're none of His. We go to church. All Christians go to church.
That's just what Christians do. They go to worship. But being
a Christian is even more than that, ain't it? All Christians read the Bible.
All Christians pray. But being a Christian is more
than that. What is it to be a Christian? It means you have the Spirit
of the living God dwelling in you. That's what it means to
be a Christian. And he comes here now to verse
15. I'm going to spend this morning on this, and then we'll come
back and look at it again this afternoon. But I'm going to spend
the whole day on the 8th chapter of the book of Romans today.
Here in verse 15, he tells us how this spiritual life began. Probably verse 15 is one of the
most important verses in this chapter. He says, "...you have
not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, You did at one
time. You were brought under bondage,
you were conscious of it, and you were afraid, you feared,
you were anxious about it all. But, he says, that ceased. That anxiety, that fear, that
bondage ceased, and now you have received the spirit of adoption. The spirit of adoption, whereby
you cry, Father, Father. Now this is very strange. This
is very strange. Because this is the very place
that our spiritual life began. Now the spiritual life is a wonderful
life. You found it to be so and I found it to be so. There's
no life apart from the spiritual life. And you would think the
spiritual life would begin with great joy, wouldn't it? With
great peace. But it doesn't. Where does the
spiritual life begin? By spirit of bondage. It begins not with calmness,
but with alarm. It doesn't begin with peace,
but in anxiety and bondage and fear. That's where it begins
at. Listen, this one fellow said
this, Becoming a child of God arises
out of the fear that we're not one. Ain't that a mystery? Becoming
a child of God arises out of the fear that I'm not a child
of God. That's where it begins. Being right with God arises out
of a fear of the fact that I'm wrong, that I'm not right with
God. Our spiritual healing arises
out of the fear of our awful sickness. Our spiritual life
arises out of our fear of being dead in sins. Our saving faith
arises out of the fear of unbelief. And our forgiveness rises out
of the fear of condemnation, and our light arises out of a
knowledge of our darkness. That's strange, ain't it? That's
strange, but that's so. This life does not begin with
joy and peace and rejoicing, but it begins with anxiety and
fear and bondage. When the Spirit of truth is come,
what will He do, our Master said? He will convict. He will convince
the world of sin. Of sin? And what happens when
He does that? Oh, it makes you afraid, doesn't
it? It makes you anxious. Sometimes this work of the Holy
Spirit is done suddenly, and He immediately reveals the saving
grace that's in Christ Jesus the Lord, and at other times,
He works gradually. And he works slowly. He may do
it immediately, or he may take weeks or months and years, but
it's his work. It's his work. You have not received
the spirit of bondage again to fear. He will convict. Conviction
and conversion is the work of the Spirit of the living God.
David Whittle wrote this song, and you and I sing it often,
I Know Not How. The Spirit moves, convincing
men of sin. I don't know how that takes place.
You can't see that. It takes place within the heart,
within the conscience. I'm looking at you, but I have
no idea if the Spirit of God is doing anything in your heart
or not. But it's a mystery. And I don't
know and you don't know exactly how it happens. It's done in
secretly. I know not how the Spirit moved. He's like the wind, the Lord
said. You see the effects of it, but
you can't tell where He comes from. And you can't tell where
He's going. There you sit. And suddenly, what happens? Oh,
He's in the conscience. And He disturbs it. And makes
it afraid and anxious. I was talking with a man the
other day there at the prison, and he told me how the Lord saved
him, and it was very encouraging to me. He said that he had professed
the Lord about two years before this, and was baptized, and he
wasn't concerned about much. He went to his brother's house,
and his brother asked him to pray over the food, to say the
blessings, and he couldn't pray. He couldn't say anything. And
he said, I left her that day knowing that I was nothing but
a hypocrite. But he said, I soon got over
that. I was somewhat anxious from time to time, he said, but
I got over it. Just got over it. And one Sunday morning, he
said he was laying on his bed and his wife was up fixing breakfast.
And he began to feel the shame and the awfulness. that he was
such a hypocrite before God. Just suddenly began to feel that.
It wasn't so much anything that was so overwhelming, but he was
just made aware of it. And he was anxious about it.
Not like he had always been before. And he said that verse of Scripture
came to him, All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved. And he said he just poured his heart out to the Lord. Lord,
save me. And right there, That quick,
the Lord did it. The Lord did it. It's a mystery
how that happened. I know not how, but it's the
Spirit's work in the heart. And it's so encouraging because
I thought of some lost people that are here this morning, or
some of our lost children may be laying in the bed some Sunday
morning with not any thoughts of getting up and going to the
worship service. No need to do it. But suddenly, the wind blows. And it blows upon the heart and
the conscience. And there the need is. There
it is, the spirit of bondage. And they call upon the name of
the Lord. And that quick, they're a new creature. That quick, they're
changed. Sometimes we read of people who
spend weeks and months and even years. And this spirit of bondage
slowly breaks them. They try to get away from it,
but the Lord refuses to let them go. And every once in a while,
there it is, the spirit of bondage. It's fear gnawing at them, torment. They can't get away from it.
And they're miserable. Charles Spurgeon was a young
man in his early teenage years there in London. And he was going
to church one Sunday morning, but it had snowed so deep that
he decided to turn into this little chapel. And there was
such a big snow, the pastor wasn't there, so this old Methodist
man that could hardly read the Scriptures got up to read. And
Spurgeon said he found a post, must have been a support post,
and he sort of hid himself behind it. He said, I was a miserable
child. And he said, I've been this way for months. And the
man got up and he read from Isaiah. Look unto me and be yourself. And he said the poor man just
stammered around and stuttered and could hardly say anything.
And finally he stopped. And the pulpits in those days
were sort of raised. And Spurgeon said, he looked
down at me and stopped. And said, young man, you look
miserable. And he said he saw me well. He
saw through me because he said I was miserable and had been
miserable. And he said, young man, if you
don't obey my text this morning and look to Jesus Christ, you'll
live in your misery and you'll die in your misery. And Spurgeon
said, I looked and I lived. I lived. That's the work of the
Spirit. That's His work. You have not
received the Spirit of bondage again. And what does that tell
us? You had one time received the Spirit of bondage. And that's
the Spirit of God. And He becomes the Spirit of
bondage. He shows us the bondage that we are in. Conviction and
conversion, in a sense, is the most simple thing in this world. It's simple. It's so simple. It comes right down to this.
I become a sinner in my own eyes. And Jesus Christ is the only
one who can save me. And I come to Him. I look to
Him. I believe in Him. I cast myself
upon Him. And He saves me. That's conviction
and that's conversion. And it's so simple, isn't it?
It's so simple. But I tell you in another way,
it's very, very complex. It's a great mystery. Only the
Spirit can accomplish it. And it's done out of the sight
of everybody. And oftentimes, most of the time,
those in whom the Spirit is working, all they know is their conscience
is now living, anxious about all this. anxious about facing
God. I can't continue on about this.
I can't go on like I am. I'm not right with God. I must
be right with God. But here's the paradox of it
all. How does a dead sinner come to
know he's dead? Ain't that a paradox? Ain't that
a paradox? How does a sinner whose mind
is enmity against God come to need God and want Him? Ain't that a paradox? How can
a man who cannot come begin to come? Conviction and conversion. Joseph
Hart had this to say about him in his great song, the hymn,
The Paradox. Listen to what he said. Listen
to what he said. And this is what I'm saying,
that the way of life begins not with joy and rejoicing and peace,
but it begins with anxiety. Joseph Hart said, how strange
is the cause. How strange is the course that
a Christian must stir. How perplexed is the path he
must tread. The hope of his happiness rises
from fear. And his life he receives from
the dead. That's what I'm saying. That's
what I'm saying. It doesn't begin with the life. It begins with death. And our
life arises out of death. Why is this necessary for the
Holy Spirit to produce this spirit of bondage, this spirit of fear,
this spirit of anxiety? Why is this absolutely necessary? Well, let me give you some reasons
right quick. First of all, God has purposed to glorify His Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. He has purposed to glorify the
Savior in our hearts and in our thoughts. But how can this possibly
be done? if we don't fill our need of
Christ. God is glorified and glorifying
His Son in forgiven sins. But how can this be done when
we do not fill the need of forgiveness? When the Lord Jesus comes into
this world, He calls Himself a physician. And He says, God
has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to bind up their wounds, and
to pour Him oil in those wounds. And He's even sent me to revive
the spirit of the contract ones and to recover sight of the blind. Now, brothers and sisters, if
you can do this, you're a physician indeed. If you can get to the
heart that's broken and bind it up, If you can find the spiritual
wounds and pour in oil and heal it, if you can take a man that's
born blind and give him sight, you're going to get yourself
a name and a reputation, aren't you? That's why the Spirit of God's
work is essential, because He shows us our blindness. He shows
us our wounds. A sinner is a sacred thing. The
Spirit has made him so. It showed him that he's so. Because
it sends him to the Savior to be healed. And why is the office
of the Lord Jesus Christ so often so empty in our own eyes? Why
is that? The Lord Jesus said, they that
are whole need not a physician. This is why men do not come to
Christ. They don't have a need of Him.
They don't have a need of it. Therefore, the necessity of the
work of the Spirit of God, this spirit of bondage, bondage. The Lord Jesus said, I'm going
to set at liberty the captives. I'm going to free them. Well,
how does He do that? Making them know their bondage.
And they come to Him and say, Lord, free me. Free me. My doctor,
bless his heart, I like him. I like to sit and talk with him.
But he's not really a good doctor. If I had anything seriously wrong
with me, Sheldon, I wouldn't go to it. And I'll be honest
with you, I wouldn't go to it. You'll never see his name in
the newspaper. You'll never see the major networks interviewing
him. Why? Well, he's good for a hangnail
or something like that. Anybody cut a toenail out that's
ingrown can't do it. But you be a dying of cancer,
you need a heart transplant. You contract a disease that has
brought the sentence of death in you. What do you do then?
You start asking around. Do you know anybody that's been
this sick? Do you know anybody that healed
him? And then you say, I saw this doctor. He's known all over
the world. You get to him. You find a sinner
and nobody else can save him. You can say, I know one that's
He's got himself a great name and great honor and great glory.
Jesus the mighty to save. But I tell you, until the Spirit
does His work, it's useless, ain't it? It's useless. I go
to my doctor to get a checkup just to make sure I'm doing fine.
I ain't going to him if I'm real sick. I'll find me a good doctor.
I ain't going to the Savior unless I'm a sinner. And nobody else
will. But if you see a man smiting
his chest and say, oh, be merciful to me, send him to the office
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord's come to give Hisself
a great name. God is seeking to glorify Him. So He finds these sick souls,
men that's in bondage, men that's anxious about their soul salvation. Secondly, the necessity of the
work of the Holy Spirit is this. God would have us to know the
nature of sin. He will not let us get out of
this world to heaven without making us know the nature of
our sin. When we sinned against Him back
in the garden, He told us, He told Adam. He said, Adam, don't
you dare sin against Me. Don't you disobey My voice. If
you eat of that fruit I told you not to eat of, you'll die.
You'll die. And Adam ate of that fruit, and
what did he do when he heard the voice of the Lord? He hid
himself. He hid himself. Why did he do that? He didn't
want to face up to what he had done, what he now was. But God
called him out and drug out of him a confession of sin. I was naked. I was naked. What
made you naked? What made you naked, Adam? I
sinned. I sinned. There's the nature
of sin, ain't it? Sin against God makes us naked. It strips us of any protection. Sin against God sends away any
claims that we would have upon Him. Oh, isn't that an offensive
thing to God? The Lord used to send His prophets
out, and He sent them out for this reason. Make My people to
know their sins. Make Israel to know his abomination. Only acknowledge thy transgression,
that you have transgressed under all these trees. You've worshipped
idols. You've not loved Me. You've not
believed Me. You've not honored Me. You've
not obeyed Me, saith the Lord. He just ain't going to let us
get out of this world, brothers and sisters, without acknowledging
the nature of our sin. It's against God. It's a black
thing. It's offensive thing to Him. But none of us know this until
the Holy Spirit comes and convicts us of sin. We just don't know it, do we?
We lay down and we sleep so well, and we sleep, as old brother
Scott Richardson used to say, on thin ice, over hell itself,
because we don't know. You've read about Paul in the
seventh chapter of Romans. You know what he said about sin? He said, I had not known it.
I never had the knowledge of it. I didn't know what the nature
of sin was. Until the Spirit came and brought
the law to his heart and to his conscience. And then he said,
oh, now I see it. It spread all through me like
a cancerous, the sentence of death in me. Now I said, O wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I worry about people who say
they're not a sinner anymore. I worry about people like that.
I was reading a commentary on Romans 7 not long ago. where
Paul was talking about, when I would do good, evil is present
with me. I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin. And that fellow said, this was
Paul's experience before the Lord saved him. Well, let me
ask us this question this morning. Is Romans 7, as you read it,
and you see that warfare there, the good and the evil, in this
one man. Is that your experience? That's
the Christian experience, isn't it? And what is that? But the Lord constantly reminding
us and teaching us of the nature of sin, that it's evil, and that
it's ever-present with us. You struggle with that all the
time, don't you? You're never free from that. If you're ever
free from that, it's when you see the Lord Jesus taking all
sin away. That's the only time you're ever
free from it in any degree. But as you study the Bible, all
the saints of God knew something about their sin. Abraham, a friend
of God, you know what he said about himself? He said, I'm dust
and ashes. Jacob said, I'm not worthy of
the least of your mercies. Dear Hannah said, I'm just a
beggar on a dunghill. David said, at my best state,
I'm nothing but vanity. Solomon said, there's not a one
of us that's just that sinneth not. And what did Peter say about
himself? This is the apostolic confession. Lord, depart from me. I am a
sinful man. And Paul said, I'm the chief
of sinners. You won't find a greater sinner
than I am. And John said, if I tell you I have no sin, I've
deceived myself and the truth is not in me. That's the Christian
experience, isn't it? As soon as the Holy Spirit comes
and begins His work in the heart, He begins to teach us of the
nature of sin. And I tell you, we'll never get
over it in this life. It will be a burden to you. I can say
this from personal experience to myself. that my sin right
now is a greater burden to me than it's ever been all my Christian
life. It causes me to groan, but it makes us feel our need
of Christ the Savior and a righteousness outside of ourselves that we
can't establish. And lastly is this, the work
of the Spirit is so essential in the heart, this work of conviction
and conversion, because it's here that our hope is born. Now, I'm going to deal with this
this afternoon. But it's here that our hope is
born. If we say we have no hope, where
did your hope arise? When did it arise? Was it not
right here in conviction and conversion? You had no good hope
before that. You have no true grounds to hope.
But when He comes to us and He makes us anxious over our sins,
and the Spirit of God, the Spirit of adoption comes, and we say,
Father, Father, there's where our hope is born. There's where
it first has its rise. Paul says here in verse 15, no
sooner has he told us of the work of the Holy Spirit, that
verse 16 through verse 25, he begins to speak of our hope. Of our hope. He turns right around. After he says, you've received
the Spirit of adoption and you cry, Father, Father, he turns
right around and says, you're heirs of God now. You're joint
heirs with Christ. You have a good hope now. You're
saved by hope now. There's a doctrine in the Scriptures.
It's a doctrine of hope. I have hope towards God that
there shall be a resurrection both of the dead and the living,
the saved and the unsaved, the just and the just. This hope
is laid up for you in heaven, the object of it. We rejoice
in hope of the glory of God. Hope of being like Christ. The sufferings of Christ of this
present world, Paul said in verse 18, the sufferings of this present
world are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be
revealed in us. That's our hope. Coming glory. We don't know what all is going
to be revealed to us. Everything that God has in store
for His elect people. Everything a wise and mighty
Creator can make, He's got it laid out for them. And when they
see it, oh, the glory that will be in it. The tongue is not told. It's
never entered into our mind, the glory that shall be revealed
in us either. We hope for the glory of God. And what is that? I'll tell you
one thing it is, being like Him. Being like Him. Ain't that your
desire here, to be like Him? But I tell you, there's coming
a day, dear child of God, that glory is going to be revealed
in you. John said, we are the sons of
God now. It does not yet appear what we shall be. But when He
shall appear, we shall be just like Him. This is the hope we
have. The Son of God is going to descend
from heaven. And He is going to change our vile body and fashion
it like unto His glorious body. There is the glory. And that
is our hope. That is our hope. And where did
this hope arise from? Well, it started back yonder.
when the Spirit of God was pleased to cross our path and to make
us anxious and serious about salvation. It's borne out of bondage, borne
out of anxiety. When we're made to cry, God be
merciful to me. And then the Spirit of God comes
and cries, Father, Father. And now we hope. Let me read
this verse to you in closing, Colossians chapter 1. Look in
Colossians chapter 1. Hope, verse 25. I'm a minister. Paul said, I'm a preacher. according
to God's plan, God's purpose, God's dispensation, which He's
given to me, to you, to fulfill the Word of God. And this ministry
is a mystery. I preach mysterious things. The
Spirit reveals these things, which had been hid from ages
and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints.
to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory
of this mystery among the Gentiles. What is it? Christ in you. And what is that? If Christ is
in you, you're in the Spirit and the Spirit's in you. You're
in Christ and Christ is in you. If Christ is in you, what is
that? That's your hope. Of what? Glory. Let's pray.