NT Framework - Yielding our spirit to His

In order to yield to someone else you must respect and trust them, especially when yielding directly impacts your health or wellbeing, or have a compassionate heart toward them when the yielding is minor in nature. Does this make you think about your relationship with God and yielding to Him? 

More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com 

This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).

Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner. 

Transcript

Welcome And Series Context

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Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy it.

Indwelling Versus Filling Explained

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Being filled by the Spirit is not a once-for-all ministry of the Spirit for us. Some of the once-for-all ministries are things like indwelling. I mean, the moment you believe in Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell you, you're indwelt. Romans 8.9. If you don't have the Spirit, you don't belong to Him. So He comes to dwell within us, and while He's in us, we can greet the Spirit, Ephesians 4.30. So the indwelling concept is a once-for-all ministry. But the filling can happen multiple times in our life because whenever we commit personal sin in thought, word, or deed, then we are out of fellowship and we cease to be filled for his work in our lives.

Confession Restores Fellowship With God

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So how do we restore the filling of the Holy Spirit? Once we have sinned, well, we confess. And the confession is uh means to say the same thing about our sin that God says about our sin. That is, that it is it has compromised his holiness, it has gone and violated his holiness. So we are agreeing with God. And uh some believers don't agree with God. They they, of course, want to hide their sin. This is the opposite of confessing. It's an antonym to hide and to not come out in the open and confess. And so what we want to do, though, to be restored to fellowship and being filled by the Spirit is we want to confess our known sin. 1 John 1 9, we quoted every Sunday, right? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And when we do that, it's a private confession. We don't have a confessional booth here at Spokane Bible Church. Um, that's a Roman Catholic thing, and uh we don't do the Roman Catholic thing. We we believe that we're all priests, and we can go to God directly and confess. We don't have to go through a human priest or some hierarchical system. Um that's just a gossip room, anyway. That's where you get power over other believers because you hear their confession and then you have power over them to wield it against them and control people. That's a control system. We don't believe in control systems other than the Holy Spirit controlled systems. Okay, so he's managing us. And um, Paul says in Acts 20, I commit you to the grace of God and to his spirit, who is able to work in our lives. So we don't need a human confessional system like you see in Roman Catholicism.

Word Of Christ And Abiding Fruit

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Um we have this ministry of the filling of the Holy Spirit. We want to be filled by means of the Spirit so that he is actively at work in our life to produce his fruit. This is identical to what we find in Colossians 3. These books were written at the same time. I call these companions, Ephesians and Colossians. So flip over Colossians a couple books, and you'll see. I I think I wrote down like 50-something parallels between these books. I've got a nice little chart that I put together one day. But in the parallel section of Colossians, Colossians 3 16, rather than saying be filled with the Spirit, he says, Let the word of Christ dwell richly within you with all wisdom teaching, admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts. Okay, parallel passage. And yet here he doesn't describe it as be filled by the spirit, but let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. Just like filling, you know, obviously that has a concept of being full. So here, dwelling richly. Same basic concept. And you'll notice two members of the Trinity are involved here too. That's very interesting. In one passage, it's the filling by the Spirit, and the other passage it's the Word of Christ, which ties together the Word of Christ, the second person of the Trinity, with the work of the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. And we're going to get into the Trinity today. So very interesting. When we are letting the Word of Christ dwell richly within us, when we are filled by the Spirit, then we are abiding. John 15, 1 through 6, the vine and the branches. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me bears much fruit. He who does not abide, you know, there's nothing. So you abide in me, I abide in you, and there will be much fruit. See, okay, and so this is the ministry of the Spirit in our lives, the filling, the abiding ministry where there is productivity, there is fruit, and it's his fruit. Uh we don't want to see our fruit. We know what that is. That's not good. But his fruit is all the good stuff, right? Those are the things that he'll evaluate and reward us for. Uh, this is not a ministry to be confused with spirit baptism or indwelling, which are never commanded, but we are commanded here in Colossians 3.16. We are also commanded in Ephesians 5.18. It's commands. Do not instead be filled by means of the Spirit. Let the Word of Christ dwell richly within

Yielding Moment By Moment In Real Life

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you. That means it can be resisted. Uh, if it's a command to follow, we can say no, I don't want to do that. But of course, we should say yes, and we should want, and it has to be a conscious thing. So it's a conscious decision you're making moment by moment in your Christian life as you consider am I going to be filled by the Spirit on this occasion or am I going to do what I want to do? And so some scholars have called this yielding, the importance of yielding. And so I like to think of you know getting on Highway 90 down here uh from Maple or whichever direction I'm coming. And when you get on that highway, they even put a stoplight there now. And what are they saying? Uh we're only gonna let so many people on the highway at a time, you know, because we can't yeah, otherwise yielding won't work. And I'm even though I don't like the stoplight and all that kind of stuff, um, yeah, it's probably for the good, right? But we should control ourselves in the sense of saying, okay, I'm gonna yield to the Holy Spirit's work in my life. I'm not just gonna charge onto the highway and do things my way. Um I'm gonna do things his way. And so that's very important that we learn to consciously yield in situations. We have to train our mind to not react to our situations and the people around us, but rather to stop and to think and say, Okay, am I gonna yield to the Spirit of God right now? Because what I want to do is I want to do this. But um He would not have me do that.

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We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with him. If you found uh this podcast to be uh useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.