The Transforming Power of the Holy Spirit

1:12This morning, I think we should be honest with ourselves and ask the question: can people in our community look at us, look at our church, look at other Christians or other churches in? In this community, and say that kind of love, that kind of unity, that kind of work, that kind of joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, that is not explainable unless something supernatural is at work in them.

1:56Do we think that people in our community could look at us as Christians or look at our churches and say that? I think if we're honest, maybe we can't say that. I think Chan is right. The church becomes irrelevant when it becomes purely a human creation. When there's nothing more to it than human wisdom being dispensed in the form of three and four and five-point topical sermons, when it's nothing more than marketing gimmicks, strategies meant to rival Hollywood or meant to rival the Fortune 500 companies of our country.

2:39When there's nothing more to it than what we as humans can do in our talent and our abilities, then the church is irrelevant. Because if we're trying to compete with the world on its terms, we can't do it. They have more money, more people working on those kinds of things than we will ever have. But the church. Is relevant in every age and in every place when churches and Christians are empowered and filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

3:15We have to develop a practical theology of the Holy Spirit. And what I mean by that is not that we understand the right truths about the Holy Spirit, that you could take a quiz or a test and get a hundred regarding the person and work of the Holy Spirit. What I mean when I say practical theology is that what we believe about the Spirit actually makes its way into how we live our lives as Christians and how we live our life together as a church. That's what I mean.

3:45And Paul is going to help us to do that very thing today at the back half of chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians. What we're going to learn today is that the Holy Spirit alone transforms natural people into spiritual people. If you were here last week, we covered verses 1 through 5 in the chapter, and Paul was saying that he did not come proclaiming God's message with his own methods. He didn't change the message, and he didn't change his methods to reflect the world's wisdom. He did not do that.

4:24And the big message that we got out of those first five verses is that we can't rely on human wisdom. Must rely on the wisdom of God. But now, look at here in verse 6. He says, yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom. Well, that seems very confusing because it seems like he was just saying that he wasn't using wisdom. What does Paul mean? Well, what he means is that the gospel appears foolish. It seems to be foolish to the world, but it's not actually foolish. The gospel really is the wisdom of God. It's just that the people of this world, the rulers of the age, as they're called in this chapter, they don't receive the wisdom of God.

5:09And there was a point in every one of our lives when we also did not receive the wisdom of God. He says the rulers of the age did not receive it, and obviously not, because they crucified Jesus, the Lord of glory. The question is why? Why did the rulers of the age that Paul refers to, why did they crucify the Lord of glory? Well, friends, to rightly answer that question, we have to rightly understand this passage of Scripture. And not just this passage of Scripture, but what the entire Bible teaches on this subject.

5:50And the subject that we're talking about is human nature. What we learn from Scripture is that the The world breaks down into two types of people: natural people and spiritual people. That's the language that Paul uses in verse 14. Now, when we hear the phrase spiritual people in the 21st century, it has a certain connotation, doesn't it? If somebody were to say, I'm a spiritual person, or I'm not a spiritual person, they mean something. What do they mean? Well, the one who says, I'm a spiritual person, usually means that their worldview is not purely materialistic.

6:36So, they may believe that God exists, or that a God exists, or that many gods exist. They might believe that human beings have souls that will last forever. They might believe in an afterlife of some kind. They might believe that we can connect with the universe in some mystical way. But what they believe for sure is that this, what we can see with our eyes, and hear with our ears and touch with our hands, that's not all that there is. That's usually what a person means when they say, I'm a spiritual person.

7:08And the person who says in the 21st century, I'm not a spiritual person, what they mean is that their worldview is materialistic. They don't believe that there's anything that exists beyond what they can see and hear and touch with their hands. They believe that that's all that there is. But Paul is not using the terms natural person and spiritual person in those ways. He's not talking about how people perceive themselves or how they think of themselves or how they classify themselves.

7:37No, what Paul is doing is he is distinguishing between unregenerate people, that is, people who are still spiritually dead in their sin, and regenerate people, those who have been made alive by the power of the Spirit. You see, what God reveals to us in his word is that when we are born, we are all born spiritually dead. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, passed down their sinful nature to us, along with the curse that God pronounced on them. And so when any person has been born after Adam and Eve, they are born spiritually dead.

8:17And so what we need is to be what the Bible refers to as regenerated. The Bible has a bunch of different terms for it, but what that word means is that God imparts spiritual life to those who are dead in sin. Regeneration is when God imparts spiritual life to those who are dead in sin. So the Bible calls it being born again. It calls it being born from above. It calls it being spiritually renewed. It calls it becoming a new creation. All of these and many other terms refer to this act of regeneration where God takes someone who is dead in sin and makes them alive by the Spirit.

8:58So now we return to... The question. Why did the rulers of the age crucify Jesus, the Lord of glory? Well, take a look at verse 8. We get a partial answer here. He says, none of the rulers of this age understood this, that is, the secret and hidden wisdom of God. None of the rulers of this age understood this. So, what Paul told us is that the rulers of the age crucified Christ, and we could say that anyone in any age who rejects Jesus does so because they don't understand the gospel.

9:39They don't understand the hidden and secret wisdom of God. But we have to be very careful here, because if we're not careful, we're going to misunderstand and misuse the way Paul is using the word understand or understood. You see, when Paul says that they did not understand the hidden and secret wisdom of God, Paul is not saying that they literally cannot comprehend the message of the gospel. If you were to go to a non-Christian friend or family member, co-worker, and you were to share with them what you believe, that God exists, that he created the world and everything in it for his glory, including us, that we rebelled against him in our sin, and that there was no way to be able to do it. For us to save ourselves, and so he sent his son to live perfectly and die in our place for our sins and rise again so that we could be reconciled to God. If you were to go to your non-Christian friend and say, This is what I believe, they would understand the words that came out of your mouth, they would be able to comprehend that. Paul's not saying that they lack intelligence or understanding.

10:55What he is saying is what he clarifies in verse 14. Take a look there: the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. So, Paul explains this: the natural person, which was every one of us from the moment that we were born, we were all born natural, we were all born unregenerate. Every natural person, they don't accept the things of the Spirit of God. Why? Because they're folly, they're foolishness, and they can't understand them because they're spiritually discerned. Not because they're not intelligent people, but because they're spiritually discerned. It requires the work of the Spirit to understand these things. You see, friends, the natural person will not accept the things of the Spirit of God, and indeed cannot accept the things of God. Of the Spirit of God, will not and cannot.

12:05And they will not and cannot accept the things of the Spirit of God because of two reasons: sin and Satan. Sin and Satan. Sin is the primary reason that the natural person cannot and will not accept the things of the Spirit of God. And Satan then works 24-7 to reinforce the human will against the things of the Spirit so that he won't accept them. Now, we've already discussed the fact that we're born dead in sin, the fact that a natural person lacks the ability or the desire to receive the things of the Spirit of God. The natural person can't and won't. And this is what Jesus teaches in John chapter 3. Take a look on the screen at what he says.

12:55And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. According to Jesus, why doesn't the natural person receive the things of the Spirit of God? It's because he can't and won't accept them. He loves his sin. He loves darkness rather than sin. Than the light. His deeds are evil, and he wants to go on doing those things. He can't and won't accept them for those reasons. It's an issue of ability. He can't receive the things of the Spirit because he's dead spiritually. But he won't accept the things of the Spirit of God because he loves his sin. That's what Jesus is telling us. So, our primary problem as natural people from birth is that we can't and won't accept the things of the Spirit because of our sin. But that's hardly our only problem. We also have an enemy, Satan, who exists to steal and kill and destroy and deceive, the father of lies, as Jesus calls him. And we see him always at work attempting to reinforce the human will against the things of the Spirit of God.

14:22You see this right away in Genesis chapter 3. Satan comes to our first parents, Adam and Eve, and what does he do? He twists and he distorts the Word of God. He replaces their faith in God and His Word with doubts about God's goodness and about what God said in His Word to them. He twists and distorts the Word of God. He does the same thing to Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus is tempted for 40 days, and what does Satan do? He comes to him and he twists and he distorts the Word of God.

15:00And in other cases, Satan doesn't bother twisting or distorting. He just simply takes away the word of God from people's eyes and ears. That's what Jesus is talking about in the parable of the four soils in Matthew 13. Look at what he says. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path.

15:31In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul has a broader explanation of the work of Satan, which fits in line with everything that we're talking about here. Look at what he says. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. So Satan is working 24-7 to reinforce the will against the things of the Spirit of God. He does it by distortion and twisting the word of God. He does it sometimes by taking the word of God away. But in all of this, what he's trying to do is to blind us to the reality of the truth of the things of the Spirit of God.

16:16So, friends, the natural person, the unregenerate person, can't and won't accept the things of the Spirit of God. Because of sin and Satan, they appear foolish to him, incomprehensible to him. And so that's the answer that Paul gives. Why did the rulers of the age crucify Christ, the Lord of glory? Because of sin and Satan. Because they could not and would not accept the things of the Spirit of God, the revelation of Jesus Christ in the gospel.

16:46But that brings up a question that's just as important. And that's this. How then does one become a spiritual person? If we're all born dead in sin, if we have this primary problem of sin in our hearts, and we have this secondary problem of Satan seeking to twist and take away the Word of God to blind us, how does anyone become a spiritual person? Let's pick up in verse 7. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

17:29What Paul is saying is that they are sharing the secret and hidden wisdom of God. And if you've read any of Paul's other letters in the New Testament, he explains what he means when he uses the phrase secret and hidden wisdom of God. The secret and hidden wisdom of God is at least threefold. It is first and foremost the good news of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, that he is the promised one, that he has come. The secret and hidden wisdom of God is... Is the good news that Gentiles are now fellow heirs with the Jews. That people like us are no longer excluded. And the secret and hidden wisdom of God is the beautiful reality that through faith, Christ lives in us.

18:20I would love to take the time to explain and meditate on each one of those aspects of the secret and hidden wisdom of God. That Jesus is the Christ, that we Gentiles are fellow heirs with the Jews, and that Christ lives in us through faith. But friends, that's not Paul's primary point in the passage. Paul's primary point in the passage is simply to say that God's illuminating spirit is required to understand and to believe the good news of the gospel, the secret and hidden wisdom of God. That's why Paul writes what he writes in verse 9.

18:58If you look there, he quotes from the Old Testament to prove that apart from the Spirit of God, no eye can see, no ear can hear, no heart of man can imagine what God has prepared for those who love Him. No one, not natural people, not spiritual people, no one can fathom what God has prepared. And so, if natural people from birth can't and won't accept the things of the Spirit, how does one become a spiritual person?

19:27Let's pick up in verse 10. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the Spirit of that person, which is in him? So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now, we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

20:05And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. Paul says these things have been revealed to us by the Spirit of God, and that we have received not the Spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God. So, what's the answer? How does one become a spiritual person if all of us are born natural, unable and unwilling to accept the things of the Spirit of God?

20:39You become a spiritual person when God graciously reveals Himself and His wisdom to you through the power of the Holy Spirit. That's how you become a spiritual person. And friends, this is exactly what Jesus tells Nicodemus in that most famous interaction in John chapter 3. If you're not familiar with the Gospel of John or with the person of Nicodemus, Nicodemus is this amazing guy. He's a great teacher. He's renowned throughout the nation of Israel as one who can understand and explain the Old Testament as well as anybody. And he comes to Jesus by night because he's a Pharisee. He's a little bit worried about his reputation. Jesus is not well received among the Pharisees. So he comes at night to ask Jesus some questions. And almost right off the bat, Jesus tells him, unless one is born again, he cannot receive or see the kingdom of God.

21:38Well, that confuses Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, as it would you and me. And so he asks him, How can one be born again when he is old? I want you to look at how Jesus responds. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

22:23How do you become a spiritual person? Jesus' answer to that question. Is, you have to be born again. And you don't just wake up one day and say, I see that I am an unregenerate person. I am dead in my sin. There is no way for me to approach God. No, what does Jesus say? Look again at the text on the screen. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

23:11In other words, friends, being born again, becoming a spiritual person, that's not up to you. It's not a result of your intelligence. It's not a result of your works. It's not a result of you doing the right set of things. It is a gracious act of God by where He takes you, a natural person, an unregenerate person, and makes you alive again. He takes your dead heart and gives it new life. He makes you into a new creation. It is a work of His grace through and through. Just like the wind blows, you don't cause it, you don't see it, but you see its effects. That's how it is with the Spirit of God. You don't cause Him to come and regenerate yourself or anyone else. You don't see Him at work, but you see His effects, don't you? You see his effects in your life. You see his effects in the lives of others around you.

24:06And one of the effects of being a spiritual person, of being born again, is that he takes up residence in us and he reveals the will of God, the wisdom of God. Yes, the thoughts of God, it says in this passage, to us. That's one of those wonderful results. When he regenerates us and illuminates us, the gospel no longer appears foolish. It no longer appears incomprehensible to us. Why? Because look at verse 16. For who has understood the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

24:44Would you just let that sink in for a moment? Through the Spirit's work in your life, you have the mind of Christ. You can understand God and His will and His ways in ways that you simply could not before because of the Spirit's gracious, illuminating work in you. That is marvelous. Church, this is a critical passage for us not just to read or meditate on, but for us to understand and apply in our lives. How we understand and apply this passage has great implications for our lives. And so I want to leave every spiritual person in the room with three exhortations.

25:32I want to exhort you to be humble, to be hopeful, and to be prayerful. Be humble, hopeful, and prayerful. First, I want to exhort every spiritual person in the room to be humble. One of the primary truths that Paul conveys in this passage is that whatever we understand about God and His will, whatever we understand about God's ways, is a gracious gift to us. It is a gift that we did not earn, it is a gift that we do not deserve. It is a gracious gift of God to us to illuminate us, to open our eyes, to open our ears, to see and hear the spiritual things that we could not understand before.

26:18That work is a gracious gift. And friends, pride and boasting is excluded anytime we're talking about a gracious gift. So, I don't want you to stand before other Christians who don't have as much illumination as you do, who don't understand all of the things about God's Word or about theology or about application as you do. Because why do you understand what you understand? You only know what you know as a result of the gracious illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. So, we can't boast in front of other Christians.

26:58And we certainly can't boast. In front of non-Christians. Yes, with our words, but also with our hearts and with our minds. How would we boast that a blind man can't see? Of course they don't understand spiritual truths. Neither did we, until the Holy Spirit graciously illuminated us to be able to see and to hear, to behold things that we could not understand before. So, Christians, I want to exhort you this morning to be humble. Second, I want to exhort every spiritual person to be hopeful.

27:41If you look again at verse 9, Paul says, What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him. Human beings cannot fathom what God has prepared for those who love Him. And that means natural people and spiritual people. We can't fathom it. Jesus said that it was good that He was going away and sending us the Holy Spirit because He was going to prepare a place for us, a place in the new heavens and the new earth. However, wonderful that you think that will be, it will exceed your wildest expectations, your wildest dreams. When people talk about heaven, you hear these images of like clouds and harps. That sounds miserable. Has anyone ever heard that and thought, wow, I can't wait till I get there?

28:41No. Thank God heaven is never described that way in the scriptures. It is greater than anything that we can fathom. And so, as we live in this world and we are bombarded with the wisdom of this world that says, you have one life. Squeeze everything out of this one life. Spend your money on yourself. Focus on your happiness. Do whatever you need to do because you only have a limited time on this earth and then it's over. We're bombarded with that over and over again, that message. We can say, We're living for something else. We're living for a kingdom that has come and is coming. We're living for a new heavens and a new earth. This life, this world, is not all there is. So when we experience disappointments and setbacks academically or in our careers or in our relationships, we can say with great confidence, this world is not all that there is. I am disappointed, but I'm not crushed because my hope is not in this world.

29:46And so, Christians, I want to exhort you to be hopeful today. And finally, I want to exhort the spiritual people to be prayerful. And I mean this in. Two senses. I want you to be prayerful about your sanctification, your spiritual growth, and I want you to be prayerful about your evangelism. Here's what I mean: I want you to be prayerful about your spiritual growth because I am convinced that most of us are grinding away, trying to read our chapter of scripture every day, trying to pray some, trying to read books here and there that we get a third of the way through and then put on the shelf and feel bad about. We are grinding away, and yet we are not asking for the power of the Holy Spirit to illuminate our hearts and minds so that we would be captivated and changed in our encounters with God through His Word.

30:52I was convicted by this passage in reading the Bible supernaturally by John Piper. So, I want to quote it at length. It's a long quote. It's actually a series of quotes. It's actually an entire chapter. It seems to me that thousands of people approach the Bible with little sense of their own helplessness in reading the way God wants them to. If more people approach the Bible with a deep sense of helplessness and hope-filled reliance on God's merciful assistance, there would be far more. Seeing and savoring and transformation than there is.

31:36When Paul prays that we would know our hope and the riches of God's inheritance and the greatness of God's power, he's not praying that God would inform us with facts we don't know. The facts have been taught. What he is asking is that we perceive, that we grasp, comprehend, assess truly, savor the glory of our hope, and the riches of our inheritance and the greatness of his power. This is a prayer not for the seeing of facts, but for the seeing of worth and beauty.

32:20Does that not resonate with you? How many of us, like me, have opened our Bibles in the morning or in the afternoon or at night, and we sit there and our eyes pass over the words and we set it down. Two minutes later, we can't tell you what we read. It's because we're not asking for the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. What do we think we're reading? A Harry Potter book? This is the word of God.

32:50Do we think that we don't need His help? None of us would say that. But isn't that how we act? Isn't that how we live? Yes, we need God's help. The help of the Holy Spirit to grow spiritually. So let's ask for it. Let's be prayerful about that. And I want to exhort you to be prayerful in your evangelism. Look at what Jesus said in John chapter 6: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

33:31Friends, the Holy Spirit is not a helpful addition to our evangelism. The Holy Spirit and His power are a necessary prerequisite to any evangelism that we do. I want you to evangelize. I want you to have a method for evangelism. I don't care what method you use as long as you share your faith with people in your life. But we must acknowledge, we must recognize that if the Holy Spirit does not draw people to God the Father, they're not coming. It does not matter how hard we work, what methods we use, how often we do it, if the Holy Spirit is not at work. And so let's pray. Christians, let's be prayerful in our evangelism.

34:23Some of you are here even this morning because God the Father is drawing you to Himself. He's been drawing you for some time. This isn't a new thing this morning. Christians in this room have prayed for you. God has been at work in your life. The whole reason that you are here today is because God is drawing you to himself. I want to urge you, you cannot change yourself, transform yourself into a spiritual person by adding religion to your life. Even if you could make yourself look like a spiritual person on the outside, even if you added religion to your life, it still would not make up for your sin against God. You need a Savior. You need one who can reconcile you to God, who can forgive you for your sin, who can take out your heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh that knows and understands the spiritual truths that we've been talking about. You need a Savior, and Jesus is that Savior. He is the one who came and lived perfectly and died in your place and rose again so that you could do what you were created to do, and that is to exalt and honor God with your life.

35:42Friends, this passage teaches us today or reminds us today to be totally dependent on the Holy Spirit to illuminate our hearts and minds. We are helpless without him. All that's left for us to do is to live in light of that truth. Spirit alone transforms natural people into spiritual people. Let's pray. God, we pray that you would forgive us for what Francis Chan called our tragic neglect of the Holy Spirit. I think when we look at our lives, we look at our churches, there are so many things that we are just doing in our own strength, that we are just doing according to our own talents and abilities instead of relying fully on the Holy Spirit.

36:45And so, Lord, we want to acknowledge this morning that no one's eyes can be opened. No one's ears can be opened. No one's hearts can be changed apart from the work of the Spirit. And so, God, would you fill us, your people, with your Holy Spirit so that we could not just know and understand, but so we could see and behold and savor you. Would you fill us with the Holy Spirit so that we are burdened for non-Christians in our lives? And so that we go to share the good news of Jesus with them in the power of the Spirit, not trusting in ourselves, our words. Our methods.

37:33God, help us to be a people who live in daily dependence on your Spirit. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.