WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.760 Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim 2 00:00:05.760 --> 00:00:10.380 truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. The Christian is under the 3 00:00:10.380 --> 00:00:14.960 guidance of some invisible system, and that invisible system is the Holy Spirit. 4 00:00:14.960 --> 00:00:20.680 Using the word of God as information technology to send it into our hearts as a 5 00:00:20.680 --> 00:00:26.760 guidance system. He works in us that way. He controls us. 6 00:00:26.760 --> 00:00:35.160 You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com slash podcast. 7 00:00:35.160 --> 00:00:40.520 Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled 8 00:00:40.520 --> 00:00:45.400 life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, 9 00:00:45.400 --> 00:00:50.960 that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. 10 00:00:50.960 --> 00:00:56.320 Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. 11 00:00:57.320 --> 00:01:01.600 As a believer, you should be comforted by the Holy Spirit. All of us have a 12 00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:07.240 trauma, life, difficult. Things going on in life. None of us are exempt, but boys 13 00:01:07.240 --> 00:01:12.280 it tough going through life alone. Thank God that we as believers have the comfort 14 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:16.280 of the Holy Spirit, and we saw in verse nine that he does three things for us. 15 00:01:16.280 --> 00:01:23.040 He confirms our relationship with him. He confirms it to us. I love this. We 16 00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:28.440 don't have to make it up. God confirms his call upon our lives. Secondly, we saw 17 00:01:28.440 --> 00:01:33.000 this. It's God the Holy Spirit who possesses us as believers. When we ask the 18 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:37.400 question, what spirit lives in you? You got to stop and ask yourself. And don't 19 00:01:37.400 --> 00:01:43.200 make assumptions, friends. Are you possessed by the Holy Spirit? That's what you 20 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:48.520 want in life. You're going to be possessed by either the spirit of self, the spirit 21 00:01:48.520 --> 00:01:55.360 of this world or the Bible says, the spirit of antichrist. What you want is the 22 00:01:55.360 --> 00:02:01.760 spirit of God to possess your life. All of us are open vessels until we're filled. 23 00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:08.360 And the question is, who is it? What spirit is in you? And again, don't make an 24 00:02:08.360 --> 00:02:12.440 assumption. I've gone to church on my life. I've just, I've been a faithful. What 25 00:02:12.440 --> 00:02:21.560 does that matter? I can quote Bible. Satan can out quote you. Doesn't matter. What 26 00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:27.960 spirit is in you? He confirms he possesses and we saw also that he reveals. He's the 27 00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:32.960 Holy Spirit who reveals truth to us. It is God the Holy Spirit that unlocks to us the 28 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:36.840 understanding of the Bible. That's why when somebody's religious and they're reading 29 00:02:36.840 --> 00:02:43.160 the Bible, but they don't get it. They don't understand it. They pick up the Bible. 30 00:02:43.160 --> 00:02:50.200 They read John 5 or John 3 or Psalms 1 and they don't get it. It looks like Greek to 31 00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:56.640 them or sounds like it. It's foolishness to them. Why is that? Because you do not have 32 00:02:56.640 --> 00:03:02.240 the Holy Spirit revealing the Word of God to you. Let's be honest, Christian. Every one 33 00:03:02.240 --> 00:03:08.480 of us who know the Lord, when you open up this Bible, I mean, imagine it being quiet 34 00:03:08.480 --> 00:03:17.440 right now. I unsnap it. I open it up and when I go like this, God speaks. And I know 35 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:21.520 that sounds kind of crazy or childlike, but I got to tell you, if you pick up the Bible 36 00:03:21.520 --> 00:03:27.640 and turn everything off, turn the TV off, turn the music off, turn your phone off, yes, 37 00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:32.520 you can. You can turn your phone off. And you start reading the Bible. Now for me, 38 00:03:32.520 --> 00:03:39.440 who's ADD wacky, I've got to read the Bible out loud. Because if I start reading it 39 00:03:39.440 --> 00:03:47.640 silently, I can hear crickets. I can hear a bug on a bush somewhere. So I have to read 40 00:03:47.640 --> 00:03:53.080 out loud. That's what I have to do. And how is it that God speaks is because the Holy 41 00:03:53.080 --> 00:03:58.880 Spirit reveals the Bible. You don't read the Bible. You're not going to hear from God. 42 00:03:58.880 --> 00:04:03.640 But you read the Bible. Be ready to hear Him. The second thing we saw last time is in verse 43 00:04:03.640 --> 00:04:08.720 10, is what Spirit lives in you. Is he the Spirit of life? The Holy Spirit is all about 44 00:04:08.720 --> 00:04:16.120 life. He's the living Spirit. He's the Holy Spirit. He's the giver of life. And in verse 45 00:04:16.120 --> 00:04:23.400 10, we learn this that he's the Holy Spirit who controls. He controls. Listen, and you'll 46 00:04:23.400 --> 00:04:32.120 agree with me as a believer, my life is guided. I want to believe like a guided missile, 47 00:04:32.120 --> 00:04:38.280 guided. That missile may be fine through the atmosphere, but there's satellites and there 48 00:04:38.280 --> 00:04:45.280 is devices keeping it on a trajectory on what is known as a teleonomic path. That rocket 49 00:04:45.280 --> 00:04:50.080 is following information and visible to our naked eyes. It's following as we're a string 50 00:04:50.080 --> 00:04:54.400 of information to the destination. I believe my life is like that. I think if you read 51 00:04:54.400 --> 00:04:59.520 the Bible, it confirms that. God says our lives, our days of our lives are all numbered 52 00:04:59.520 --> 00:05:03.280 by God. He knows exactly the day that you're going to die and he knew the day that you're 53 00:05:03.280 --> 00:05:07.600 going to be born. God knows that. You don't know that. You say, oh, yeah, what if I commit 54 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:15.760 suicide today? You're assuming you'll be successful. You jump off the building, not this building. 55 00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:20.880 You go find some other building. Get off the property if you're going to go do that. If you're wrong, 56 00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:30.880 you're going to hurt. If your day has not come, you can't hasten it and you can't be too late 57 00:05:30.960 --> 00:05:38.320 for it. God knows. It's amazing, but he's the spirit of life and he controls. I'm getting a little 58 00:05:38.320 --> 00:05:44.880 nervous these days. Have you noticed when you're driving on the freeway, notice this the other day, 59 00:05:44.880 --> 00:05:53.520 55 heading north and somebody, I don't know, we're all doing, you know what? California 55 is, 60 00:05:54.320 --> 00:06:00.080 first of all, there's freeway 55, which is what I was on, but you're supposed to go 55, 61 00:06:00.080 --> 00:06:09.440 which when translated in California is 80. That's the conversion. It's 55 in all other states, 62 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:14.800 but it's 80 here in California. And so as you're going along, I glanced over and I saw somebody 63 00:06:14.880 --> 00:06:25.120 reading a book and they were passing me. Reading a book, you say, Jack, you're joking. I'm not joking. 64 00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:31.760 He was driving a Tesla. Okay, a Tesla. That's why we have blackouts and brownouts in California. 65 00:06:31.760 --> 00:06:36.800 Everybody's charging their Teslas now. Our lights go dim when the neighbor charges this Tesla. 66 00:06:36.800 --> 00:06:43.360 Have you noticed that? But the person's going down the road, something's in control. He's reading a 67 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:48.400 book. Man, let me tell you, I don't have that kind of faith. I'm old school, give me the wheel, 68 00:06:48.400 --> 00:06:54.400 give me the pedal, but this person had no problem with it, but that vehicle was going down the road, 69 00:06:54.400 --> 00:06:58.560 doing all the stuff that normal vehicles do, but it was under the guidance of some invisible system. 70 00:06:58.560 --> 00:07:03.760 Are you hearing me? The Christian is under the guidance of some invisible system and that 71 00:07:03.760 --> 00:07:10.080 invisible system is the Holy Spirit using the word of God as information technology to send it 72 00:07:10.080 --> 00:07:17.360 into our hearts as a guidance system. He works in us that way. He controls us. We learned that he 73 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:25.520 does this because he indwells us. What a deal. Christianity is the only faith group of all religions on 74 00:07:25.520 --> 00:07:31.600 the earth where the God of Christianity says, I'm going to move inside of you. I'm going to dwell 75 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:36.720 within you and I'll surprise you. It's not only the comfort, it's also the uncomfortable 76 00:07:37.360 --> 00:07:43.200 part of the Holy Spirit living in you. That uncomfortable part is he doesn't let you get away with 77 00:07:43.200 --> 00:07:53.040 anything and I love it because you know what? Jack doesn't know what's best for Jack. Jack's not 78 00:07:53.040 --> 00:07:59.920 good for Jack sometimes and that's when the Holy Spirit takes over. Why? How does he control me by 79 00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:05.520 indwelling? How does he control you by indwelling? Is it amazing to think right now that the Holy 80 00:08:05.520 --> 00:08:11.840 Spirit is everywhere in all places at all times if you think about it, the Holy Spirit? And then 81 00:08:11.840 --> 00:08:18.400 thirdly we saw last time that he purifies. He's the Spirit that purifies us. He gets us ready. He's 82 00:08:18.400 --> 00:08:23.440 getting us ready. The other day I posted something on my Facebook page, I think it was or all the 83 00:08:23.440 --> 00:08:27.680 platforms, whatever, but it was response to an article and the article said something like this, 84 00:08:27.680 --> 00:08:33.760 maybe you read it, that a national poll shows that Christianity is dying in America. 85 00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:39.520 And on the surface I would say absolutely, that's totally obvious if you didn't know anything 86 00:08:39.520 --> 00:08:47.120 about Christianity. Hear me loud and clear everybody. Do not worry about statistics and articles 87 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:53.520 and I'll tell you why. Because we are in the days that the Bible says are the end times, 88 00:08:54.000 --> 00:09:01.520 Jesus's truth that he proclaimed to us is still true and that is the gates of hell will not prevail 89 00:09:01.520 --> 00:09:10.000 against his church. So when you see an article done by researchers who say Christianity is dying 90 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:17.600 in America, I wrote, I took that article and I simply said don't worry people in the reading of 91 00:09:18.160 --> 00:09:23.680 this, God is just purifying his church for the last days. See what do you mean by that? Listen, 92 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:30.320 the numbers are shrinking but the numbers should shrink. Why? Because the closer we get to wedding day, 93 00:09:30.960 --> 00:09:36.640 right? The church is being purified by the Holy Spirit. The bride of Christ is getting ready. 94 00:09:37.520 --> 00:09:43.520 And you should get very excited about this reason is that when you see more and more people headlong 95 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:49.920 departing out of Christianity, just know this. They were never in Christianity to begin with. 96 00:09:49.920 --> 00:09:55.440 It was because it was comfortable that they were there. Now it's not comfortable. The truth 97 00:09:55.440 --> 00:10:02.480 is revealing who's for real and who's not. Don't worry. Are you a real follower of Christ? How do I 98 00:10:02.480 --> 00:10:09.360 know? What spirit lives in you? And you won't be bothered by statistics. You won't be bothered by 99 00:10:09.360 --> 00:10:17.600 an article because you know that you belong to God. He indwells you. He brings you comfort and 100 00:10:17.600 --> 00:10:22.960 control. He's purifying you. He confirms this relationship to you by revealing more and more the 101 00:10:22.960 --> 00:10:26.880 word of God to you. So church, here we go. We pick it up and I'm going to give this to you in 102 00:10:26.880 --> 00:10:33.200 advance so you can make notes of it. The final close out of this is what spirit lives in you. 103 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:38.400 Is he the spirit of resurrection? That's what we learned in verse 11. The spirit of resurrection. 104 00:10:39.040 --> 00:10:43.360 And there's going to be three things that we get out of those out of that verse. He's the spirit 105 00:10:43.360 --> 00:10:49.600 of power. Can't have resurrection without power. He's the spirit of eternity. The whole point 106 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:57.680 behind resurrection is eternal life. And he's the spirit of glory. Glory. Yeah, this is something 107 00:10:57.680 --> 00:11:02.720 that we're going to be experiencing. Maybe scratching our heads forever in eternity. And that is 108 00:11:02.720 --> 00:11:10.000 God is going to glorify us as believers. The Bible says so. It's hard to believe. But it's 109 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:16.960 true nonetheless and it is awesome. So he is the spirit of resurrection. And we see so by power. 110 00:11:16.960 --> 00:11:23.760 Look at verse 11. But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. 111 00:11:24.800 --> 00:11:30.880 Notice it's the Holy Spirit. Notice it says the Holy Spirit of him is a remarkable statement. 112 00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:39.920 You see the spirit of God, the spirit of him, the spirit of Christ, if his spirit dwells in you. 113 00:11:39.920 --> 00:11:47.200 This is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person friend. The Bible teaches from Genesis 114 00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:51.840 through Revelation that he is a person. You know, listen, there's a lot of cults out there that 115 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:57.920 call him an it or they don't call him. They don't say him. They say it's an it. It's a power. 116 00:11:57.920 --> 00:12:07.280 It's this God made force like the magnetic belt or Luke's Skywalker's force. You know, 117 00:12:08.160 --> 00:12:15.680 the force be with you. No, no, he's not. Listen, the Bible says that he's a person. And the Bible 118 00:12:15.680 --> 00:12:19.600 says that the children of Israel, when they're wandering in the wilderness, they would not believe 119 00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:25.360 God. And because of their unbelief, the Bible says they made angry the Holy Spirit and he turned 120 00:12:25.360 --> 00:12:31.520 on them and became their enemy. Can you imagine the Holy Spirit being your enemy? And in 121 00:12:31.520 --> 00:12:35.040 Iacons to fire in the book of Acts, chapter five and six, remember what they were doing? 122 00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:42.240 The Bible tells us that they lied to the Holy Spirit. Listen, you can go outside right now 123 00:12:42.960 --> 00:12:50.240 to a fire hydrant and lie to it. It won't matter. You can go to your car and tell it all kinds of 124 00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:57.600 stories. It ain't going to hear you. But the Holy Spirit is alive. He's eternal and he's 125 00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:04.880 part of the Godhead. In fact, Jesus said, all manner of sin will be forgiven. The sin against 126 00:13:04.880 --> 00:13:10.080 the Father and the sin against the Son, but he who sins against the Holy Spirit will never be 127 00:13:10.080 --> 00:13:16.000 forgiven in this life or in the world to come. That is called blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. 128 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:22.640 You never want to commit that sin, which is this, dying without accepting Christ. That's it. 129 00:13:22.640 --> 00:13:27.520 It's the Holy Spirit's job to point you to Jesus now. That's what he's doing every day, 130 00:13:27.520 --> 00:13:33.120 every single one of you. He's doing it, atheist. He's working overtime on you. He's trying to get 131 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:39.920 you to safety and you're fighting and kicking against him. It's the Holy Spirit that's visiting 132 00:13:39.920 --> 00:13:52.080 you in your thoughts. Yield to him, but he's the power. And I know how we thank his humans. We're so 133 00:13:52.080 --> 00:13:59.280 dumb. We think of things. Well, he's powerful. Haven't shown me. Listen, God doesn't succumb to your 134 00:13:59.280 --> 00:14:05.600 threats and your bullying. Besides, he knows us better than we do. And if we saw something, 135 00:14:06.480 --> 00:14:14.960 we probably still wouldn't believe it. Thus, the God of the Bible goes to work on the inside. 136 00:14:18.160 --> 00:14:24.720 But notice the qualifier there in verse 11. The Spirit or the Holy Spirit. Two things, 137 00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:29.040 the point of interest here that we should make note of. This is about the Holy Spirit as a person 138 00:14:29.440 --> 00:14:36.320 and his function that is indwelling within you, the power. He does that by his power. How in the 139 00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:46.080 world can God who is everywhere be everywhere except inside you, listen, inside you until you 140 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:52.480 invite him in? I want you to think about that for a moment. According to the Bible, God is everywhere. 141 00:14:53.440 --> 00:14:57.600 The omniscience of God. He's in all places on the presence, I should say. 142 00:15:00.240 --> 00:15:04.240 But think of this theological dynamic. God can be and is everywhere, 143 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:09.680 but according to the Bible, he's not inside you until you invite him in. 144 00:15:11.760 --> 00:15:18.160 That, she calls you to pause. That is a deep thought. Because contrary to your 145 00:15:18.640 --> 00:15:25.600 friends or family or earlier belief, we are not all sons and daughters of God according to the Bible. 146 00:15:26.560 --> 00:15:31.120 Jesus said that when we come into this world, according to the Bible, that we are all lost and 147 00:15:31.120 --> 00:15:37.120 we're all sinners. But we need to be born again. By the way, born again, Jesus said that 148 00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:43.440 to a man who was more righteous than you and I externally gave more money, did more good deeds, 149 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:47.280 combined all of us together. The guy was better than all of us combined. I'm talking about 150 00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:52.000 Nicodemus. And Jesus said, Nicodemus, unless you're born from above, you'll never see the kingdom 151 00:15:52.000 --> 00:16:00.560 of heaven. Think of that. God's got to be on the inside. And he does that by his power, by his 152 00:16:00.560 --> 00:16:07.760 person. His whereabouts is amazing. As I said, he's everywhere, but is he inside of you? By the way, 153 00:16:07.760 --> 00:16:12.240 I think personally, I'm just making this up now. This is not Bible. I'm making this next part up. 154 00:16:12.960 --> 00:16:20.080 I'm wondering that for those who are in hell this morning, I'm wondering if part of their hell 155 00:16:20.080 --> 00:16:24.480 is knowing that when they had an opportunity to say yes to Christ, they said no. 156 00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:33.440 And the very joy or gift or life of the Holy Spirit that could have been in them, they rejected. 157 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:39.360 Because we know that those that are in hell blame themselves. They blame nobody else. 158 00:16:43.200 --> 00:16:50.240 I love this Psalm. Psalm 139. This is 3,000 year old Psalm. This is awesome. And by the way, 159 00:16:50.240 --> 00:16:58.960 it's sublime. Look at it. It's quite scientific in some ways here. Whether shall I go from my spirit, 160 00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:03.440 or whether shall I flee from my presence, says David, if I stand up into heaven, 161 00:17:03.440 --> 00:17:09.040 thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning 162 00:17:09.120 --> 00:17:16.640 and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand 163 00:17:16.640 --> 00:17:23.840 shall uphold me. What a song. David is saying, I can't go anywhere. Whenever I ran from God, 164 00:17:23.840 --> 00:17:30.880 God was there. When I got there, didn't Jonah find that out? Jonah runs from God, winds up 165 00:17:30.880 --> 00:17:37.120 that Jonah is having to steal deal with God in the storm, God with the boat. Jonah says, 166 00:17:37.520 --> 00:17:42.960 I know how to handle this. He tells the crew, throw me overboard. I'm the reason of your problems. 167 00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:47.280 The reason you want the storm to calm down, throw me over. That's committing suicide. 168 00:17:47.280 --> 00:17:50.640 Jonah has them, and they don't want to do it. They don't want to do it. These are a bunch of 169 00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:56.800 pagans that are saying, that's not right. That's not right. In Jonah, throw me over. He would rather 170 00:17:56.800 --> 00:18:02.960 die than obey God. They throw them over, and I'm wondering if he's thinking on the way over. 171 00:18:03.600 --> 00:18:09.360 Finally, I'm getting away from God. He hits the water, and it's like, I am going to drown, 172 00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:18.080 and that's it. Anything other than obey God. And then there's this, the Bible says, God 173 00:18:18.080 --> 00:18:24.640 reads your Bible carefully. It was not a whale. The Bible says God prepared a great fish 174 00:18:25.200 --> 00:18:34.400 in a swallard of up. The Bible says that Jonah was thinking in there, and he was three days 175 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:41.360 and three nights in the belly of the fish. Can you imagine? And that fish spit him out, 176 00:18:43.600 --> 00:18:46.880 and I have no idea what he looked like, but he had to stink to say the least. 177 00:18:47.360 --> 00:18:54.880 But he found out that God was not only in the sea, he was speaking to him in that fish. 178 00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:58.960 You might be in a situation where you think, that's it, I've run away from God, I've made it, 179 00:18:58.960 --> 00:19:04.000 and God is speaking to you. Or you might be in a situation where you think God will have nothing 180 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:08.880 to do with you, that he doesn't care about you, that he doesn't want you. Maybe you think you've 181 00:19:08.880 --> 00:19:13.680 sinned so far that you're not welcome into the family of God, and God is speaking to you, 182 00:19:13.680 --> 00:19:18.080 and he's using this message right now, and the verses that we're teaching on to speak to you. 183 00:19:18.080 --> 00:19:18.720 It's amazing! 184 00:19:23.440 --> 00:19:27.680 This Jack Hibb's podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, 185 00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:32.320 are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? 186 00:19:33.040 --> 00:19:38.720 Go to jackhibb's.com to learn more and stay connected.