Matthew-105

 

Today, we continue our exposition in the Lord Jesus’ teaching in Luke 21 to study the meaning of redemption. Last week, I tried to expound this in a very simple manner because I recognized that often what I am preaching here may be sometimes a little too difficult for the young Christians and the non-Christians because some aspects of the Lord Jesus’ teaching are quite deep. And I cannot always so simplify so that what is preached can be understood entirely by a non-Christian or by a young Christian. And from time to time, I do try to expound redemption and salvation at the level where hopefully, everyone can understand, including a non-Christian who may never have been to church before. But I cannot always remain at that level. Sometimes, I have to expound the gospel at its full depth. And at that point, I apologize to those of you who are not Christians and may find it difficult to understand what is expounded. And I hope you will bear with me.

 

Redemption means: set free from slavery of sin by Jesus’ life, his blood

Last week, we talked about redemption and freedom from sin. We saw that redemption means being set free from slavery. In the ancient world, to be redeemed means that if you were a slave, and someone paid a ransom, a price to set you free, you were said to be redeemed. Redemption always means setting free in the sense that a price has to be paid, not like blowing up a jail. We are very familiar with hostage-taking in this present time, and the price paid to set them free is called a ransom. That is the price of redemption. When you are set free through the payment of a price, you are said to be redeemed. That is what the word “redeem” means.

We saw also that we were in bondage to sin, in bondage to death, and Jesus paid a price. This price is his own life, his own blood, to set us free from that bondage. I hope all this is very clear for you to understand, as to why the Bible has this term “to be redeemed.” To be redeemed is not just to be set free, but that a price was paid to set you free. And the Bible tells us as for example in Ephesians 1:7, that the price is the blood of Jesus Christ. His blood represents his life. Your blood represents your life; if you lose your blood, you will die. When Christians speak about Jesus redeeming us with his blood, it means he is giving his life to set us free.

 

Open your heart fully to God, let him touch it first, then your personality

I also went on to expound the fact that when we are redeemed through such a cost of the life of Jesus, the true Christian’s response must be one of grateful love to give ourselves totally to him just as he gave himself totally for us. I am sure you are aware by now that there are lots of “not true Christians,” that there are “phony Chris­tians.” But when we talk about a true Christian, we mean a Christian who loves God with his whole being, who responds totally to God. What we mean by a Christian who is not true is that he does not respond totally to God. He has perhaps responded in part to God. In the light of Scripture, we would call this kind of person someone who is on the way to becoming a Christian but he is not really a Christian yet. The true Christian is, as the teaching of the Lord Jesus tells us, one who loves God with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind and all his strength. We saw that there is a certain progression in here, that God first touches us in the heart, which then has an effect upon the soul. The soul in the Bible does not mean some particular part in us but it means our whole life, our whole personality. So when God has touched us in the heart, it affects our whole personality, our soul, if that touch of God upon your heart is indeed a transforming one. And this means if our hearts have been fully open to him.

 

We must understand with our minds what God is doing, or we don’t benefit

Then I went on to expound the fact that it must go beyond that; it must also reach the mind because unless it reaches the mind, we don’t really understand what God is doing to us. And what we don’t understand, we cannot fully grasp, and so we easily lose it. That is why it’s very good to have an emotional experience, but it’s not enough because you easily forget it. Emotion comes and goes; it passes away quickly. But when you consolidate it by understanding it with the mind as to what has happened, you have made it truly your own, and you can go on to love God with all your strength. Then you know what you are doing, otherwise you don’t know what you are doing.

The apostle Paul was a person who loved God with his heart, which indeed he did, but not only with his heart, but he also loved God with his mind. He clearly understood what he was doing, which is more than can be said for many Christians. They don’t seem to understand what they are doing. And it is very easy to ask a Christian some very simple questions and he cannot answer you because he doesn’t really understand. Therefore, on the one hand he cannot consolidate what he gained, and on the other hand, he cannot pass it on to others. The apostle Paul loved God with his mind. That is why he was able to expound so clearly the things concerning God’s truth.

For example, he expounded the meaning of salvation in a whole book called Romans. The whole book of Romans is an exposition on salvation. There you can see how clearly he grasped what salvation means and was able to explain it to others which is more than most Christians can do. You can ask them many questions but they cannot answer you because they have not learned to love God with the mind. They do not fully understand what they believe, or if they do, they don’t understand why they believe it. It is very important to understand what we believe and why we believe what we believe. Therefore, it is essential that after a wonderful experience such as we had at the camp, when God’s love was poured down upon us and shed abroad in our hearts, that we also sit back and ponder what does this mean so that we may consolidate what we got, so that we may understand and be able to explain to others in due time, “Now this is what happened.” Also, when you understand what happened, you are able, if necessary, to let God do this again. It will not be an experience once in the past, but you will be able to let God do it again and again for us until the whole church is transformed. It is most essential as Christians, that we understand what God is doing.

When you say, “I am saved,” and someone asks you, “What does it mean that you are a Christian?” or “Why are you a Christian?” that we can explain it clearly. Not just explain it so that the other person does not have a clue what you are talking about, rather, we can ex­plain it at a level that he can understand, “Ah! So that’s what it is to be a Christian!” “Why do you believe in God?” Now you can explain: “I believe in God for these and these reasons,” in a way that makes sense to his mind.

 

Spiritual understanding is based on personal experience of God

When I say love God with all your mind, I am not merely talking about an intellectual understanding. That is why I tried to show that there is a difference between spiritual understanding and intellec­tual understanding. Today, there are lots of books called “Systematic theology,” that is, systematizing what there is. Now I want to make it very clear to you I am not talking about systematic theology. When you have read through systematic theology, it does not necessarily mean that you understand or even that the writer himself under­stands what he has systematized. Systematic theology is simply systematizing what you find there. For example, when you open the book, you will find that under the heading of “God,” there are all these facts said about God, that He is omniscient, He is omnipotent, that He is omnipresent and the like. Now that in itself is not terribly illuminating. What we need to understand is what is omniscient, what is omnipotent, what is omnipresent. All these things can be again understood on two different levels. You can understand it purely on an intellectual level, which can be done simply by a dictionary definition. Or you can understand it on a spiritual level. Here I would like to explain the difference between spiritual understanding and intellectual understanding.

For example, an intellectual understanding of the presence of God can be simply defined as for some reason of his sovereign grace, God chooses to be present among his people. That is a good intellectual definition. Fine, God is present among his people. Does it mean anything to you? It may or may not mean anything to you unless you have this spiritual understanding.

What is a spiritual understanding? A spiritual understanding is not just a definition of the fact. It is a deep, inner perception of what this means. I may understand something at my intellectual level, for example, I know what it is to be redeemed, but I may not myself have been redeemed. There are a lot of theologians who know at the intellectual level what it means to be redeemed. They understand the definition of redemption, they understand that it means that you are set free through the payment of a price; but they don’t have a spiritual understanding of what this means, that is, they don’t have a deep, inner perception of it through a personal experience of it. This means spiritual understanding must be based on personal experience of God. You cannot have a spiritual understanding without experience of God although you can have an intellectual understanding.

When I speak of the presence of God in a spiritual way, I mean that I am understanding it in the sense that I have experienced God’s pre­sence. Having experienced God’s presence, I have sought to under­stand not only on an emotional level that God is here and I feel a great tinge of excitement, which is an emotional experience and it is fine. But when I calmly understand and grasp not only with my heart but also with my mind what it means that God is present, I have begun to consolidate the matter well beyond an emotional expe­rience. If you have had this kind of spiritual experience, and you have meditated upon it, and begun by God’s grace to understand it, then you will understand what I mean by a spiritual understanding as distinct from an intellectual one.

A non-Christian can have an intellectual understanding of the gospel anytime because all he has to do is read a book on it. When you read a book, you may, if the book is clearly written, understand what Christianity is about. You have an intellectual understanding but you don’t have a spiritual understanding of it until the gospel is a reality in your life, until you have allowed God to come in and transform your life. Then when he has transformed you, you have a spiritual experience but you may not yet understand what has happened to you. It is when God has transformed your life then you ponder, “What has God done to me? What has happened in my life?” And as you meditate what has happened in your life, and as you begin to understand what God has done in your life, you gain what is called a spiritual understanding.

 

It takes spiritual understanding to clearly explain spiritual experience

Now a person can genuinely be transformed, he can become a real Christian but he has not yet got spiritual understanding until he begins to ponder deeply as to what has happened. Have you pondered what God has done in your life? And have you pondered it in such a way that you have been able to explain it to others? This proves whether or not you have spiritual understanding.

When you speak to a young Christian who has experienced a trans­formation, he has seen God do something to him. He has changed but when you ask him what has happened, he says, “I don’t really know. Something has happened to me. Things are different now, but I don’t know what exactly has happened.” He has gained a spiritual experience but he has not yet reached a spiritual understanding. He cannot explain. And this is what I mean. To be able to explain it is to be able to understand it. You cannot explain what you don’t understand. As you mature in the Christian life, you will be able to explain more clearly what has happened.

 

Understand Romans by comparing it with what happened in your life

This is what Paul says in Romans. Paul had an experience of God on the Damascus road. His life was revolutionized, but he could not explain it at first. Paul himself tells us in Galatians 1:18 that he went into the wilderness for three years. What did he do for three years in the wilderness? I am certain that for a great part of that time, he pondered before God: “God, what did you do to me? What has happened with my life?” He meditated about his spiritual experience on the Damascus road, when the Lord Jesus met with him, when he saw the Lord Jesus with his own eyes and his whole life was changed. He needed time to think about what had happened. And as he pondered his experience in the light of the teaching of the Lord Jesus, he compared these things, he prayed, and gradually, the whole matter became clear. And from it was born clearly, the book of Romans. There he expounds what happens when God comes into your life. You will need to study it and then you will see.

The fact that so many Christians find Romans hard to understand shows that they have not gained spiritual understanding. All you have to do is take Romans and compare it with what happened in your life, you will find it not at all hard to understand. But if you are trying to deal with it purely at the intellectual level, you might run into problems because you are not always sure what Paul is talking about. You have not got the spiritual reality in your life to be able to compare or identify with what Paul is saying in Romans. I hope all this is very clear to you.

I really want to stress this because I would like us all to be Christians who have not merely experienced what God has done in our lives, not merely experienced what God has done for us for example, at the camp, where we began to catch a vision of what the church can be, and what it should be, not only for one week but for every day of the year, and to ponder what does this mean, so that we may draw out the spiritual principles, and then re-apply them in a deep, spiritual and intelligent way in the days to come.

 

Spiritual redemption is now, but God’s full redemption is in the future!

We need to go on in this matter of redemption today, so let us read Luke 21:27-28.

The whole world will see the Lord Jesus coming in a cloud with power and great glory!

This word “redemption” apolutrosis is used 10 times in the New Testament. Apart from this reference here in Luke 21:28, it is used by Paul 7 times and 2 more times in Hebrews, which is a Pauline writing.

I would like to draw your attention to the understanding that re­demption here is future. When those signs are happening, even then your redemption has not yet come, but “your redemption is drawing near.” It draws near with what? In verse 27, with the Coming of the Son of man. When Jesus comes, we will be fully redeemed. This is something very important to grasp in the Scriptural teaching. You see clearly here redemption is spoken of as future. Salvation has not yet come in its fullness.

In Scripture, we have a foretaste of redemption and salvation as a present reality, but its fullness is in the future. The Scripture does not allow us to think of ourselves as being fully redeemed, fully saved right now. No, in Scripture, redemption and salvation in its fullness is still future. We do experience a setting free now but we are not yet fully set free. Paul makes this extremely clear in a number of passages. This is important for us to grasp because it has a very definite application for our daily lives.

For example, he makes this point very clear in Romans 8:22-23.

We wait for adoption. What is the adoption? The redemption of the body. Our bodies have not been redeemed because they are still subject to death. We are still groaning, Paul says, as we wait for the adoption. We have a foretaste of the work of the Spirit in our lives. We have also experienced liberation from bondage to sin, which is incomplete redemption. Our bodies are not redeemed; they have not been set free. Sin is still lodged in our bodies (Romans 7). Death is still going to overtake this body. Our redemption now is a spiritual redemption, but we don’t have a physical one yet. We only have a foretaste of the full redemption that is future, when God will redeem us physically as well as spiritually. Therefore in our earnest desire, we are groaning for that redemption which is yet future, when our bodies will be set free from sin and death, when we shall put on a body that is incorruptible, a body that is immune to death and sin.

Paul says the same thing again in a very important verse for our message today, Ephesians 4:30.

Notice, the day of redemption is future. That day is still to come but we have already received the seal of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We have received the foretaste of God’s power in our lives. And we are sealed for the day of redemption which is yet to come. So we have not yet got the full salvation. We are saved indeed in a sense. We are set free spiritually from sin, but full salvation is yet to come. This point is made very clear elsewhere.

Instead of talking about redemption, let us look at Romans 5:9 and see that salvation is also future. I refer to the Word of God because I don’t want to give you my opinion.

We shall be saved. Salvation is future. When we totally committed our lives to God, we were justified, that is, we were forgiven of our sins; we were redeemed from our sins. Although we are justified now, we are not yet fully saved. We shall be saved on that Day when we stand before Christ. We will be saved from the wrath of God.

How come we are not saved from the wrath of God now? We still have a life to live. Judgment is yet to come. There is no Scriptural foundation whatsoever for the statement that “Christians do not come under any form of judgment.” There is no Scriptural founda­tion for that. But I have expounded this before, we have studied the Scriptural evidence before, so we need not go over it again.

The fact is that we have now been justified; we have now been saved in the sense that we have been forgiven of our past sins. How do we live our lives now until the Judgment Day? That is vitally important, but many Christians want to write it off, that since we have been forgiven, it doesn’t really concern us what kind of life we live between now and the Judgment Day. It is most important for every Christian to observe how he conducts himself or herself until the Judgment Day because your salvation is not by any means complete yet. “We shall be saved.”

The apostle Peter makes the same point in 1 Peter 1:3-5.

Notice carefully these words, “for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time.” Salvation is “ready to be revealed”; it is soon to be revealed. When will it be revealed? It will be revealed “at the last time,” on the last Day.

We thank God that he keeps us by his power, and not uncondition­ally, but through faith, for that salvation that is yet to be revealed. It is through faith that God’s power will keep us until that Day. This means that we must consistently maintain that faith to the end by God’s grace. Now we have seen also in Matthew 24:13 (also Mt. 10:22), the Lord Jesus’ teaching on exactly the same point: he that endures to the end shall be saved. By God’s grace, that faith must remain enduring to the end. This point is so exceedingly important that I want to make it very clear to you who have been baptized recently, and to you who are about to be baptized, as indeed to all Christians. Let nobody deceive you into thinking that you can live any kind of Christian life, that you can sin as much as you like, and you will still be saved. In the light of God’s Word such teaching is falsehood, but that kind of teaching is very current in these days. As we see in the Lord’s teaching, it matters essentially how you live. Let no one tell you it’s peace and safety, that you don’t have to worry. You can have full assurance that no matter how you live your life in this intervening time, you will be saved on that Day in the future simply because you made a decision in the past. On that kind of teaching, all we really need is the day that we were saved and the Day we will be judged. The in-between time doesn’t matter. It mat­ters exceedingly, not merely for some kind of reward; it matters for your salvation! We have not yet been fully redeemed. This point has to be fully indicated.

 

We need the Holy Spirit to be saved. Do not grieve or lose him

Ephesians 4:30

Does it matter whether or not we grieve the Holy Spirit of God? According to some teachers in the church, you may grieve him but it doesn’t matter as far as your salvation is concerned. What is this exhortation for? That we should be kind to God? Don’t give him a bad time? Try not to hurt him too much? Then what has this teaching in Ephesians 4:30 got to do with our salvation? We are assured it has nothing to do with our salvation. Then you can grieve God as much as you like because he is so patient and kind, and if you keep grieving him, you will still be saved. What kind of teaching is this? Let us look at what the Word of God has to say.

 

Salvation is based on a continuing obedient faith by God’s Holy Spirit

Paul told us in Ephesians 1:7, we were redeemed from past sins with the blood of Christ. But then he goes on to tell us in verses 13-14, that when we were redeemed, God gave us an assurance that is in the Holy Spirit. Every true Christian has received the Spirit of God into his life as a pledge, as a first installment, as a foretaste of what salvation will be in its fullness on that Day of salvation.

Every one of you who is baptized, who opened your heart fully to God, has the Holy Spirit of God living in your life. God gives you his Spirit of holiness if you have the faith that obeys him, and you must continue in that faith that obeys him. As Paul says in Colossians 1:23 – “provided that you continue in the faith,” not turning back from that commitment which you made to him. Understand well that salvation is based on a continuing faith, not on some past act of faith. If you surrender that faith, how can you still be saved by faith? Salvation is by faith, but a faith you still possess, that you continue in all the time, not in just some mere past act of faith. That is the Scriptural teaching that you need to grasp clearly.

 

The Holy Spirit is spoken of in two ways in the Bible:

1. A first installment (or pledge, or guarantee)

For those who are baptized or who will be baptized, you receive the Holy Spirit first as a pledge (2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5). Ephesians 1:13-14 say exactly the same thing:

When you have become a Christian, you will be reaching the stage where you can experience God in your life because you receive his Holy Spirit into your life. The Holy Spirit is given to you as a pledge, more accurately, as “a first installment,” translated here as a “guarantee.” We have not yet acquired possession of it but we have received it as a foretaste of salvation.

 

2. A seal

The second thing about the Holy Spirit that we read in Ephesians 1:13 is that Christ has sealed us with the promised Holy Spirit. We have received a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.

As Chinese, we are very used to seals. Westerners may have trouble with this because Westerners don’t use seals too much except in business. Sometimes, the seal is in the form of a rubber stamp that you put on as a seal of your company. Or you may have a metal stamp which presses a mark into the paper. For a red legal seal, you don’t use any ink, but you apply a lot of pressure on red paper with a metal stamp, and the metal presses a seal into the paper so that you can see the seal when you lift the stamp. The whole idea of the seal is to authenticate the document. Likewise, when you receive God’s Holy Spirit, it indicates that you are a true child of God. You are not a true Christian if you don’t have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s mark upon you that you are a true Christian. There are some Christians who are not true because they don’t have the mark of the Spirit in their lives.

 

The seal of the Spirit, mark of God: a fundamental change in life

What is the mark of the Spirit? The mark of the Spirit is seen in the fruit of the Spirit. A true Christian does not merely say, “I have the Holy Spirit.” But people can see that he has the Holy Spirit because there is a quality about his life that is different. If your life is not different from a non-Christian’s, you are not a genuine Christian. It is useless for you to say, “I believed in Jesus on that day. I raised my hand and signed my form at the meeting.” The true Christian has the mark of the Spirit in his life. You can see there is a quality about him that is different. That quality is produced by the Holy Spirit. It’s not that he tries to smile a bit more than usual; it’s not that he tries to be a little nicer than usual; it’s because the Holy Spirit has done something in his life that shows in his life. His whole character and personality is changed, from the heart to the soul. It may take time to change him completely, but there is some evidence of a new person in his life. There is a real change. The person may not be aware of it. And the real test is that you are not aware of it, because if you are aware of it, it may be that you are putting on a show. You are not aware of it and people notice that you are different.

It’s so easy to accept a person for baptism sometimes, because I only have to ask around, “What do you think of so and so?” And people will say, “Oh yes, I noticed a change in that person’s life.” Then you know there is something genuine. Although God has not yet given his Holy Spirit to live in him until baptism, he is responding to God’s Spirit working in his heart, and he is beginning to break off with sin, his old way of thinking and old way of life. His character and personality is beginning to change.

Then at baptism, the Holy Spirit comes to live in that person fully. That person is sealed by God’s Holy Spirit. The stamp of God is upon that person’s life. That mark can be seen more clearly in that new attitude of love towards God as also towards people. Scripture tells us there is a fundamental change in the person’s life when he becomes a Christian. There is no truth at all to say it doesn’t matter how you live, between the day you profess to be saved and the Day of Judgment.

That change is progressive. You were not completely changed when you became a Christian. You started. You were, as Peter says, like a new-born baby. “New-born” means that you have just begun to change. There is a lot of growth yet to come. You will continue growing into the fullness of the stature of Christ, and we are all in that process of growing. No matter how far we have grown yet, it is important that God’s image is clearly visible in our lives, that we have the seal of the Spirit in our lives. God’s image can be seen in every true Christian because the Bible says that the new character, the new man in us is created in the image of Christ, in whom is the fullness of God. (Gal. 3:27; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10) So there is a family likeness, there is something quite similar about every Christian in a sense. Their character and temperament may be very different, yet each one bears the seal of the Holy Spirit, the mark of God in his life.

You will have noticed the word “guarantee” in Ephesians 1:14, and you will immediately say, “Since we’ve got the pledge and the guarantee, we are fine! Doesn’t it say ‘guarantee’ here?”

I am sure you have been around in the world long enough to know something about guarantees. The other day, I mislaid my guarantee document and when I went to get my shaver fixed, it has a 3-year guarantee, I couldn’t find my guarantee! I said, “This has a 3-year guarantee.”

So he said, “Sure it does but where’s your guarantee document?”

Three years is a long time but where did I put it? Yes, my shaver is still under guarantee but I have no document to prove it. So the shop assistant refused to get my shaver fixed.

Here is something very important to grasp for all these Christians who have put their hope in the wrong places. Scripture says the Holy Spirit is your guarantee, your first installment, but make sure you keep your guarantee. Otherwise you are going to be in the same position as me and my shaver. I have a guarantee but I cannot produce evidence of that guarantee. Therefore, the man in the shop won’t repair my shaver for free; I have to pay. Our guarantee is the Holy Spirit. Now you can see why Paul says to the Christians, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit in you.” It is your guarantee. If you lose your merchandise guarantee, you are in trouble. However, if you lose the Holy Spirit, you are in big trouble! It is the only guarantee we have for our salvation. We must keep God’s Holy Spirit in our lives.

 

Is it possible to lose the Holy Spirit?

This raises the question: Is it possible to lose the Holy Spirit? Here, I have to apologize to the non-Christian that I have passed on to a subject that they may not find easy to follow anymore. But as I said right at the beginning, I also have to speak to Christians who are not always too well informed in the teaching of Scripture.

The Holy Spirit is our guarantee. The Holy Spirit is our seal, there­fore, we must have the Holy Spirit and we must keep the Holy Sprit if we are to be saved. That is absolutely essential, isn’t it? It’s very clear because if we lose the Holy Spirit, we lose the guarantee, we lose the seal, we lose life because the Holy Spirit is God’s light and God’s life in us. Is it possible to lose the Holy Spirit? I want to ask what does the Scripture teach? I am not interested in dogma. I am not interested in theory. I am not interested even in theology. I am interested only in what the Word of God teaches. I would like you to examine the Scriptural teaching. If you can find any point at which my teaching is not Scriptural, then I implore you to point out my error to me. In vain have I waited for years for anyone to point out one iota of error. I am still waiting. If anyone points out error to me, I will be glad to submit to the Word of God. What does the Scripture teach?

I am emphasizing this point because there are those people who tell us quite dogmatically, and I was brought up in that teaching myself, that it is impossible for a Christian to lose the Holy Spirit! I am looking for it in Scripture. You search the Scripture and show me where it is written. I have searched the Scripture and I have looked in vain for such teaching that the Holy Spirit cannot be taken away from us. I cannot find such teaching. If you can find it, kindly show it to me because it breeds a false confidence apart from God himself. We hope to be saved without God. We hope God will give us his salvation, and when we’ve got this salvation, we can say, “Goodbye God. I don’t need you anymore. Thanks for the salvation. It’s very kind of you to send the Lord Jesus to die on the cross for me to give me eternal life. It’s also very kind of the Lord Jesus to die for me. But now that I’ve got eternal life, bye-bye Yahweh God, bye-bye Lord Jesus, I don’t need you anymore. You do your job to keep this world going, and I will do my job and keep myself in good shape.” That’s the kind of Christianity we have today. We want salvation without God. We want salvation without his Holy Spirit. We want to be saved and keep on sinning. We want to be saved and keep on being selfish. We don’t want God to interfere in our lives. We say, “Just save me, God. After that, just leave me alone.” What kind of Christianity is this?

In the Bible, there is salvation but salvation only with God. You have salvation only as long as you have God through Christ and in Christ. You have salvation only as long as you have continuing faith that obeys God, because we are saved by faith. Who dares to say that we can be saved even when we don’t have faith anymore? There are people who dare to say that! It’s incredible but true. If you don’t have faith, can you have the Holy Spirit of God, and can you have salvation? No way!

 

In the Old Testament

What does the Scripture say? Let us examine the Scripture. I am sure you are well aware, that time and again it has happened in the Old Testament that the Holy Spirit was taken away from people. Let us read a few examples of this.

 

Saul

This passage is about Saul, who was the first king of Israel. Saul was the person from whom the Holy Spirit was taken, and I cannot understand anyone who wants to call himself by the name Saul. Let us read 1 Samuel 16:14 [NJB]:

I have already expounded at the summer camp about an evil spirit from the Lord and I won’t repeat it. But notice these words: “the Spirit of Yahweh departed from Saul.” Saul was the first king of Israel, and he was chosen by God himself to be king of Israel, not just to be some sort of a member of God’s people, but to be king of his people. You can read all this history for yourself in First Samuel. When Saul disobeyed God and did not fully repent of it, God removed his Holy Spirit from him! This is the tragic history of Saul. How can we say that the Spirit of God is not taken away from people in Scripture? I don’t understand this. On what basis can we make such a statement?

 

Samson

We see that the same problem happened to Samson. Samson is well-known for being a man of enormous strength. He is often pictured as being full of muscles, rather like Hercules of the Greek mythology. Samson could pull the city gate down and he, one man, could put a whole army to flight. He defeated the Philistines with a jawbone of an ass. He killed a thousand man with one jawbone! He did not even need a sword; he did not need fancy weapons. He just picked up whatever was to hand and crushed the whole army! This man Samson was really something!

The important thing to grasp in Scripture is that there was nothing natural about Samson’s strength. The Bible tells us repeatedly, that Samson had only one source of strength and that was the Holy Spirit of God himself. When the Holy Spirit of God left him, he was no stronger than any ordinary man. It was no kung fu strength at all, no nei gong(內功) either, and certainly not from weight lifting. His strength was absolutely ordinary like anyone else’s. Now this is one kind of strength that all our kung fu people have not learned yet – the strength from the Holy Spirit of God. When that strength came on him, no one could hold him down. He was tied with ropes and he just burst them like a thread. And the Bible tells us again and again, that the secret of Samson’s strength lay solely in God. He had no exceptional strength left to himself. You will find this in Judges 14:6, 19 and we can go on in many places.

He was attacked by a lion and he took the lion and ripped it apart with his bare hands, killing the lion. But it tells us here that his strength was solely from God. The Spirit of the Lord came down upon him. The same is true in verse 19:

And Judges 15:14 [NJB] is similar:

But he gave his secret away in Judges 16:17 to Delilah, who was working as a secret agent for the Philistines. So often, you see the women are very good for intelligence and counter-intelligence. Just yesterday on the news, we heard that two British soldiers were led away by two Irish women and got themselves killed by the IRA. These two Irish women served as the bait to draw these two British soldiers into the trap to get them killed. And that is exactly what Delilah was doing. Delilah was serving as the bait, and as the intelli­gence. She had to find out what was Samson’s secret because so long as Samson was the judge of Israel, the Philistines could not overcome Israel. So the important thing was to find out how to knock out Samson in order to win this battle. Delilah did her job very well and she found the secret was Samson’s Nazirite vow. He was totally committed to God through this Nazirite vow, and as long as he was under the Nazirite vow, his power was untouchable. No one could break his power. Notice this: His hair was the mark, so if that vow were breached through the shaving of his head, he would no longer be under the power of God.

That is exactly what happened. In Judges 16:20, only three verses later, we find that his vow was broken through the shaving of his head, and he was left powerless, that when the Philistines attacked him, he found that his strength was no more than that of an ordinary man because the Spirit of God had gone away from him:

So the Bible is full of examples of this fact that the Spirit of God had left a person because of their disobedience. Samson had been disobedient to God. He had allowed someone else to breach it for him. He knew very well what would happen if he told Delilah, but he told her all the same. That is disobedience.

 

David

We have another example of this in the case of David. In Psalm 51:11, David pleads with God in this well-known verse:

You know very well that this psalm has to do with his sin concerning committing adultery with Bathsheba, and he was pleading for God’s forgiveness and asking that he may not remove his Holy Spirit from him in view of his repentance.

You can see again and again in Scripture, that the Holy Spirit of God can be taken away but always on one ground alone, because of deep disobedience and persistence in that disobedience. This principle is found everywhere, both in the Old Testament and in the New, and I would like you to grasp it very clearly. Whether in the Old Testament or in the New, God’s Holy Spirit is always given on the basis of obedience, because obedience is the concrete expression of faith. We can say we have faith, but that is no good with God. The evidence of faith is in obedience. And the Holy Spirit is given to those who obey God on the basis of faith. It was taken away from all these persons in the Old Testament because of persistence in disobedience.

 

In the New Testament

The same principle holds in the New Testament. There is no differ­ence between the Old Testament and the New whatsoever. As stated in Acts 5:32, the principle remains the same: God gives his Holy Spirit to those who obey him. Here you have a present participle in the word “obey.” All of you know that in the Greek, the present tense is a continuous tense, a linear tense. This means that God gives his Holy Spirit to those who continually obey him, who have the attitude of obedience towards him. It is not one act of obedience in the past but a continuing obedience right up to the Day of Judgment. It also follows when we reverse this principle, that God doesn’t give the Holy Spirit to those who don’t obey him. And God will also remove the Holy Spirit from those who resist or disobey him.

When you became a Christian, when you yielded your life to God, what did you do? You became obedient to him through faith. That is why you received the Holy Spirit. Paul expounds this in Romans Chapter 6. Once you were disobedient but now you are obedient to God. In fact, in the whole of Romans, Paul constantly speaks of the obedience of faith, and there are too many references: Romans 1:5, 6:17, 10:16, 16:19, 26 and so on. Peter speaks about the same thing in 1 Peter 1:2 – obedience from the heart. You will receive the Holy Spirit because you obey.

What will happen if you persistently disobey? You will grieve the Holy Spirit of God as we saw in Ephesians 4:30 – “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit.” What does Paul have in mind? He is warning us that what happened to the Israelites in the Old Testament will happen to the Christian too. What happened to the Israelites in the Old Testament? The Jewish people in the Old Testament grieved the Spirit of God. That is why the prophet says to the Jews, “You are no more my people” because they disobeyed God. The psalmist talks about “how often the Israelites rebelled against God in the wilder­ness and grieved him in the desert” in Psalm 78:40. In 1 Corinthians 10:1 onwards, Paul is exactly warning the Christians not to grieve the Holy Spirit because as the Israelites in the Old Testament rebelled against God in the wilderness and grieved him, they perished there; and these things were written for our instruction.

Paul also warns us: “Do not quench the Holy Spirit” in 1Thessalonians 5:19. The word translated as “quench” means to extinguish, to put out. Arndt & Gingrich, the standard New Testament dictionary, gives the definition as extinguish, put out, as in literally putting out a fire. Paul says, “Don’t put out the fire of the Holy Spirit.”

We have studied enough passages to show that these warnings hold in the New Testament just as they hold in the Old Testament. You can quench the Holy Spirit; you can put out the fire of the Holy Spirit in your life. You can grieve God’s Holy Spirit by rebelling against him, and if you do this, your candle stick will be removed, to use the language of the Lord Jesus speaking to the churches in the Revelation. Be careful lest you lose that which you have gained. The Lord Jesus warns his disciples in Luke 21:34, 36 to be careful how they live in their lives, how they conduct themselves:

 

Conclusion

Redemption is future. Salvation in its fullness is still in the future. Therefore, God has given to those who trust in him, the firstfruit of his Holy Spirit, the pledge of the Holy Spirit, the seal of the Holy Spirit. It is our guarantee. We must hold on to this guarantee by God’s grace. We must not grieve the Holy Spirit of God in our lives, even less dare we quench the Holy Spirit in our lives. We must treasure the gift of himself, his Holy Spirit, that God has given to us. He has given us this gift of salvation not through any merit of our own but through his grace and his mercy. And we must keep his Holy Spirit in our lives through obeying him day by day.

But if we grieve him, we may also quench him. If we do that, we will have lost our guarantee, our pledge and our inheritance. Then we will be like Esau, who lost his inheritance, and he could not get it back even when he sought it with tears (Heb. 12:16-17). Let us be exceedingly careful therefore, by God’s grace, to continue in his mercies.

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.