Marked by the Messenger

Awesome. Great to see everybody today. Thank you all so much for being here today. I know that the May weather is less than ideal for this, but really appreciate you just being here. You know, every time it rains around here, it like rains. That’s something that we’ve come to learn. And I’m reminded every time of Isaiah chapter 55, where Isaiah, the author, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he compares God’s word to rain. And he says God’s word, it’s kind of like rain. You know, the rain falls from the sky and it doesn’t just hit the earth and bounce right back all the way up into the atmosphere, but it stays here. It soaks into the ground. And God uses that ultimately to bring forth fruit. He uses that to create the vegetables and the fruit that we eat and which, you know, feeds the other things that we eat and all that. And God’s word is the same way. Every time God’s word goes out, it doesn’t just hit us and bounce off and go straight back. But for those who have ears to hear, it lands in their hearts and it soaks down and it produces something. So, I just want to say thank you all so much for being here because you have put yourself in a position to receive from God this morning. And I hope that’s what happens for us.

But before we get to the sermon, we’re going to go into our time of congregational prayer. We are in the month of March, so we’re going to continue to pray for these Annie Armstrong prompts. The Southern Baptist Convention, our national goal to raise this year will be $78 million. And this morning we watched the video of Tyler and Ashley Martin of Outfitter Church in Barnone, Wyoming. So those are some options for you to pray for. Mr. Johnny also told me about something else. It came to me a little later than I would have liked for this, but I want to add to your prayer list. John Moore, former pastor for us here at Sauldam. His wife Gail there at the hospital. I’m not sure what prompted this. Three aneurysms were found. John reporting from John said two of them are fine. One of them they want to operate on. So as well, we’d love to take a moment for us to pray for Miss Gail and pray that the Lord would bless the hands and the minds of the doctors that are going to be working on her, that she get fully recovered and recuperated soon. So like we always do, y’all take it away, grab a neighbor, pray for either of these prompts or Gail Moore and her health, and then I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment. Thank you guys. Jesus. Peace.

Father God, thank you so much for today. Lord, in your divine kindness and in your plan, you’ve brought us here to worship you this morning. God, for reasons unknown to us, you’ve chosen to prolong our lives individually to keep us here together as a body. Ultimately, God, all this for your glory, for the good of people. Lord, thank you so much. Father, thank you for placing Tyler and Ashley Martin in Barnone, Wyoming. God, thank you for leading them and empowering them to begin Outfitter Church. God, I pray that you will continue to bless their ministry. Lord, that there’ll be a lot more men and women like the one in the video that you use the Martins to save and to call into ministries for them to start other churches as well in needy locations. Father, thank you for the legacy of Annie Armstrong. God, I pray that our convention and the churches of this convention, Lord, would blow that goal of 78 million out of the water because you have empowered our giving. Lord, I pray for our own church’s faith-fueled generosity toward that end as well. And Lord, I want to pray for John and Gail Moore. God, I’m asking your blessing on them, please. Lord, we know from the testimony of your word and from some of the experiences that some of us have had that you are a miracle worker. God, scans and tests that one day present crazy problems for us, Lord, can the next day show absolutely nothing is there because you have touched that person with your divine hand. You might do that with Gail, and I’m praying that you would. I’m praying that these three spots that have been found would totally be taken away, God, that doctors and nurses and techs and family and churches and everybody, God, we we’d all be blown away by what You’ve done. But Lord, if You don’t do that, God, I pray that You would guide the doctors and the nurses and everybody, Lord, to handle her with care and they would get those things out. She’d be done with this. I pray for their marriage that You’d hold them. I pray for their children as they’re watching mom go through this and their grandkids, God, the same. Asking that You would You would hold all them. Please, Lord.

I’ve I’ve heard it said before that You whisper to us in our pleasure, but You shout at us in our pain. And Lord, I know that You are looking over them and You are shouting that You love them. You are dependable. God, I pray that they would hold on to those truths that they have taught so many.

Lord, thank You for bringing us here today. God, thank You for the time You and I have had in Your Word preparing for this morning. God, I’m asking that You would help me just to share what You have shared with me. And Lord, for somebody in this room, God, that has not gone from death to life in You, I pray that You would draw them that way today. Lord, may Your gospel make a mark on somebody this morning. God, we love You and it’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, if we were sitting down for coffee or maybe some corn beef for breakfast at some point this week, you know, I’d be curious your answer to this question: When did you meet the Holy Spirit? Or do you feel like you’ve ever met the Holy Spirit? Now, I I’ll confess I grew up in church. I grew up knowing a lot about Jesus. I grew up hearing sermons on the Bible for decades of my life. I personally met Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior as a 15-year-old. Called into vocational ministry shortly after that. Met my incredible wife. We go overseas. I did seminary. All that stuff. But it wasn’t until about eight years into my Christianity that I would say functionally I met the Holy Spirit. For me, it happened when we were overseas serving as missionaries. Once again, by the way, thank you all for your Cooperative Program giving and your Lottie Moon dollars years ago. You fueled us overseas. So, thank you for that. It wasn’t until we were overseas that someone had really introduced me to the person of the Holy Spirit.

When did you meet the Holy Spirit? Or have you, you know, growing up I thought that Christianity was a lot of things and I think that people around us might agree that Christianity is one of these things. For some people, Christianity is just religious. It’s just a bunch of of rules you do. It’s some check boxes you tick off. It’s kind of a service you attend or a prayer meeting you go to. Some people think that Christianity is just kind of pious. You just kind of live as stringently as you can. You try to avoid bad things. That’s just about not being bad. Other folks might think that Christianity is purely academic. It’s just a bunch of stuff you got to learn. You just got to kind of study the Bible and learn and learn and learn. And if you’re not really much of a reader or a learner, then Christianity might not really be for you. Some folks, believe it or not, they just kind of think Christianity is outdated. It might be something that was held on to by their forefathers or their grandfathers, but maybe not something that really applies to life right now. And culture is changing like crazy. Like I think that one’s like being advanced a lot. Some people around the world or in this country might actually think Christianity is oppressive. You have all these desires inside of you. You were born this way. How dare anybody, let alone the God of the universe, tell you how to operate and say no to your feelings and your own desires. Or maybe the worst is that Christianity is optional. You just live however you might want to live for however you might want to live that way. And Christianity is just one of the buffet options that you get to choose from as you work down the line of life. And at the end, you’re going to pay for your bill. And you can have chosen Christianity or not. It’s kind of up to you.

It wasn’t until we got overseas that I learned Christianity is not any of these things. Christianity is spiritual or Christianity is spiritual. And I meant that Christianity is meant to be spiritual. And we’ll see that unpacked in this passage. It’s not just supposed to be religious about rulekeeping. It’s certainly not supposed to be oppressive about subduing all of who God has made you to be. It’s not supposed to be purely academic, though there is some learning involved. Christianity is supposed to be spiritual. It is a spiritual enterprise.

This morning, I’m going to be preaching out of Ephesians chapter 1, 13 and 14. You can go ahead and start turning there. Now, we’re going to look at the final spiritual blessing that Paul is teaching the church of Ephesus this morning. You see, he has just gone through this mosaic, this waterfall, this whitewater rapids, through all these spiritual blessings in Christ. He’s going across a dozen or so verses that in the original Greek is just one sentence. Paul can’t help himself. He’s just gushing these truths that we have in Jesus.

We saw the first week we looked at this that we have this blessing of being adopted as sons and daughters of God. Not only are we adopted by God, but we are also redeemed by the Son of God. We have been totally ransomed from our past lives of sin and any future sin we might dabble with. Not only have we been made a son or daughter, not only have we been ransomed, but we’ve also been told the purpose of the whole story. We’ve been told what God is up to. This good pleasure where He’s working everything together in Christ to culminate on that last day.

And then last week we saw where God not only claims us as His own, but we also become His inheritance. It’s not just like we are only God’s possession, but God, we, we are God’s prize. We are God’s treasure. We are God’s heartbeat.

And this morning we’re going to look at our final spiritual blessing in Christ where we will learn Christianity is supposed to be spiritual. Now the original Ephesians listening or reading this, they would have need to know this. Remember some of the history that we look at the very first week of this sermon. In the city of Ephesus, this major port city in the Roman Empire, there would have been three competing loves for the Ephesians’ hearts. You would have had this ancient idol worship going on where people would have been taking live animals to a local temple to be slaughtered to the goddess of Diana or Artemis depending on which culture you grew up in. That, that goddess would bless them with fertility and love and a family. Then you would also had this imperial temple which would have been dedicated to Caesar and the Roman government where once again people would be taking live animals, sometimes their own children, and sacrificing them to the government. And then third you had this deep rich history of this kind of just spiritualistic worship.

The Ephesians who now place their faith in Jesus Christ are having to say no and goodbye to all those things. And they need to know that there’s this new faith that they have. It’s not just about learning new things. It’s not just about resisting old temptations. It’s about a functional relationship with the God who has saved them. Man, we need that type of relationship with God today, right? Amen. We need that type of relationship.

We as followers of Jesus here in America, we have never had more opposition to our affection for Jesus than we have right now. Let me say that again. While we largely have incredible privilege and freedoms in America, true authentic Christianity has never been more rare in this country since its inception. It has never been this okay to give your life to a public life of sexual deviency than it is today. Your affection for Jesus has never been tested against your affections and allegiances to anything else as it is today. The point of your life, man, whatever goes into that blank, more companies and more people and more influences are speaking into what you might believe the purpose of your life is today than has ever been the case before.

We need a functional relationship with God. We need to re, return to a Christianity that is spiritual. Amen. So let us read Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 through 4. Let’s refresh ourselves on these rich blessings we have in Christ and see what God has for us this morning. Follow along with me. Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in love before Him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He lavished on us in the Beloved One. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace that He richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. Yes. He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure that He purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time. Yes. A plan to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him. In Him we have also received an inheritance because we were predestined according to the plan of the One who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of His will, so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to His glory.

And this is where we’ll camp out this morning. In Him, you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. And when you believed, see, the Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of His glory. Imagine being a new believer in some house church in a courtyard in the city of Ephesus, and your pastor has just received a letter from this guy named Paul that you maybe have never even met before because he has long since been out of the scene, and you’re hearing what is one long run-on sentence about your standing in Jesus Christ. And he ends with that incredible crescendo.

The main point for this morning, you’ve already seen it. It’s this: Christianity is spiritual. It’s—it is spiritual. And these two verses, verses 13 and 14, prove that Christianity is spiritual in three ways. The first one is this: The Holy Spirit was promised to Christians. That’s what verse 13 says. In Him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

Now, our experience of the Holy Spirit is different today than it was for our Old Testament ancestors. This is what I mean. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit came upon individuals for a period of time to accomplish a specific assignment. I’ll say that again. It’s a mouthful. The Holy Spirit came upon individuals for a period of time to accomplish a specific assignment. There’s a lot of opportunities for me to display this in the Old Testament, but I’ll choose one from Numbers chapter 27. You see, Moses is the guy that God called to lead the people of Israel to exit Egypt and take them into the promised land. However, Moses at a certain point sins against the Lord. And God says, “You’re not going in there. You’re going to go up to the threshold. You’re going to go up to the boundary line, but you won’t take them in. Someone else will take them in.” And his name is going to be Joshua.

This then is Moses’s prayer for Joshua, a man who had a God-sized assignment to take millions of people for God into a promised land. This is Numbers 27:15-18. Moses appealed to the Lord. May the Lord, the God who gives breath to all, may He appoint a man over the community—that could be Joshua—who will go out before them and come back in before them, and who will bring them out and bring them in, so that the Lord’s community won’t be like a sheep without a shepherd. The Lord replied to Moses. Imagine that. Moses having a back-and-forth conversation with the God of the universe. You think we can have that today? Yes. The Lord replies to Moses, “Take Joshua, son of Nun, a man who has the spirit in him, and lay your hands on him. Have him stand before the priest and the whole community and commission him in their sight.”

You see, God promised to send His Holy Spirit to rest upon a particular man for a particular time to accomplish a particular mission. However, God’s plan all along was to do a new thing which He promised multiple times. Take it from Joel chapter 2 as one of the final voices of God’s people to God’s people before Jesus would come on the scene. After all this, I will pour out My spirit on all humanity. Then your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your old men will have dreams. Your young men will see visions. I will Even pour out my spirit on male and female servants in those days. I will display wonders in the heavens and on the earth. God’s plan the whole time was not just for His spirit to rest on individuals for an assignment. His plan the whole time was to pour His spirit into the hearts of His people to do something. God also says this in Ezekiel chapter 36, 26 and 27. I, God, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my spirit within you and will cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances. You will live in the land I gave your ancestors. You will be my people. I will be your God. God’s plan. And the whole time was never for us to live the Christian life in our strength or try to accomplish God-sized tasks in our ability according to our wisdom. His plan the whole time was to empower us to accomplish what only He could accomplish.

A new thing happens when Jesus came on the scene and Jesus begins the new covenant. The old covenant was a means of establishing a basis of sin. The new covenant is a means of establishing a basis of salvation. You see, in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come upon individuals for a period of time to accomplish a mission. In the New Testament, we see the Holy Spirit fills all Christians permanently to empower the Christian life. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit fills all Christians permanently to empower the Christian life.

In Acts chapter 2, Peter has just received the Holy Spirit. He and 120 other disciples are in the upper room after Jesus has been killed, been resurrected, and ascended. And they are waiting. They’re waiting. And God pours out the Holy Spirit fulfilling Joel chapter 2. And then John chapter 3, this is before that moment. Jesus is still on the scene. Jesus talking with Nicodemus, one of the religious leaders at night. Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you, unless someone is born again, he can’t see the kingdom of God.” How can anyone be born when he’s old? Nicodemus asked, “Question of the century. Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” All the moms said, “No, you may not.” Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of flesh is flesh. Whatever is born of the spirit is spirit. Don’t be amazed. I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases and you hear it sound. But you don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit.”

Man, I take a few minutes just to outline this fact. God has promised the presence of the Holy Spirit inside of all followers of Jesus. And God fulfilled that promise. Someone in here this morning needs to hear me say, “God always keeps His promises.” Thank you. God always keeps His promises. God’s past faithfulness proves His future faithfulness. So don’t give up on God just because you don’t see how He’s going to get you through something. God is God. He makes promises and He is good on His word. God always keeps His promises and He promised the Holy Spirit.

That’s the first proof of this fact that Christianity is spiritual. There’s a second proof in this passage as we return back to Ephesians chapter 1. It’s this. The Holy Spirit seals Christians. Verse 13. In Him, in Christ, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. A seal back then would have worked very similar to a seal right now. It would be something that would secure an object. It would keep it from opening up, but it would also provide a few other things. You see, a seal back then was like this mark of authority and designation. If a document was sealed, it would have been very clearly shown this belongs to someone. So, this is how some of those seals would work. That’s a ring that’s got a black stone in it. And that top left picture, you might see it looks like two birds facing each other. This was a signet seal ring used by a Greco-Roman royal. What would happen is they would draft a letter or rather they would speak a letter. Somebody else would write it all down and to authenticate the words of the letter as coming from them. They’d Put hot wax on their ring. They would press their ring onto the paper. The wax would stay there with the imprint of what you see in the middle of that stone on the top left. We have these all over the middle of the Mediterranean world. When it says we are sealed with the Spirit, it’s like God has got His ring and He’s put a little bit of Spirit wax on it and He presses it into you so that when others look at you, they ought to see the marks of God on your life. And that is incredibly good news.

If a document was sealed with one of these rings, the document holder was treated with the same delegated authority as the one who sealed it. Now, a courier wouldn’t have had any authority in and of themselves. They couldn’t have said, “Hey, by my word, you guys got to clear out of here. I am buying this land.” That’s not what was happening. But if a courier brings a letter to somebody and says, “Royal such and such has declared this land as his. You got to get off in a week or you’re going to be sent in prison.” They would have listened to the courier not because of the authority of the courier, but because the authority of the person shown on the signet ring. That’s the kind of delegated authority that these Ephesian believers had and that you can have too.

You see, if you are given to Jesus, if you’ve been marked with the Holy Spirit ring, you are God’s possession, which means nothing in this world can claim you or take you for its own. And that’s incredibly good news because the world and the flesh and the devil would love to destroy you. They would love to claim you as their own. But praise be to the Lord. Ephesians chapter 2, you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air. That’s the devil now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts. We were by nature children under wrath. But God, who is rich in mercy because of the great love that He had for us, claimed us and He sealed us as His own so that nothing, nothing could come against you. Nothing could separate you from the love of God that’s in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.

If you’ve been marked by the Spirit, then whenever temptation comes to you through that billboard or that website or that dark voice in your mind, you can say, “Get out of here. I belong to the Lord. I’ve been sealed with Him. You have no home in my life.” Man, if you’ve given your life to the Lord, there is no spiritual opposition that ought to be able to claim any shred of territory in your life, man.

But sometimes we forget that we’ve been sealed by Him and we open the back door of our hearts and we let dark things come in. We let this insistence to withhold forgiveness come in. We let this substance come in. We let this lie about our identity come in and it gains a foothold in us and you’re trying to wrestle your life away from it and you’re not remembering the fact that if you would just show the ring to that thing it would go away.

These Ephesians would have been deathly aware of the spiritual forces at work against them and around them. And I think that we have fallen asleep to the very same forces that are very tangibly against us today. We don’t go downtown and see this cult temple where people are offering goats and birds to be slaughtered so that the gods would make them more fertile or more attractive. But man, we talk over coffee with our friends who are sacrificing themselves to the gods of beauty and family and they’re giving their entire lives to those things, thinking that if they’re more beautiful, if they had some kids, if they had marriage, if they had a good career, if they had something, then they would have purpose and meaning in this life. Man, the stuff we deal with today is even trickier than the stuff the Ephesians dealt with. At least they could see a physical building and walk away from it. The building has come to us through our phones and our TVs and our computers. Man, I’m going to avoid that soap box for a…

moment and get back to this. If you’ve been sealed by the Spirit, there ought to be a noticeable impact on your unseen soul. Think about it this way. Has your soul been marked by the Spirit? Has the Holy Spirit of God come close to you and pressed His ring into your heart so that you know you are under the authority of God and so that others know the same thing about you? Paul sets the standard for what that looks like later in chapter 4. This is Ephesians chapter 4, verses 25-32. Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we’re members of one another. Be angry. Don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. And certainly don’t give the devil an opportunity. Let the thief no longer steal. Instead, he is to do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need. No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. And certainly don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by Him for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, shouting, slander, let that be removed from you with all kinds of malice and be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another just as God also forgave you in Christ.

Man, if you’ve been sealed by the Holy Spirit, a process that happens in your soul, which I can’t see, your life and your words ought to demonstrate something that I can, which is that God has had an impact on you at the core of your being. When people walk away from you, they should not say, “Wow, so and so is upset today.” They should not say, “Wow, so and so is jealous.” They ought to walk away and say, “Wow, you see God at work in this person. Wow, can you believe the Holy Spirit helped them do that?” This sealing of the Spirit is not something that you achieve later in Christianity, though. It’s not something you work your way up to or you learn your way up to. It happens at the moment you place your faith in Jesus Christ. Paul says it this way as I return to the passage. You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.

Man, there’s a couple words in there that if we just take at face value, we lose some of the depth of. So, let’s look at those again. Heard. Man, this is in listening with the intention to obey. Sometimes when I just need to kill a little bit of time while I’m washing dishes, I listen to an audio book. I’m just listening. I don’t have any intention to obey Rick Atkinson as he’s telling me about World War II while I’m washing dishes last night. It’s just something to pass through one ear, to go out the other, to kind of occupy the mind space that I’m in. But the gospel is something that we must listen to with the intention to obey it. Why would we do that? It’s because it’s truth. The second word, truth. It is a dependable message that conforms to reality. The gospel is not some over there message about a Savior that came to some people thousands of years ago. The gospel is the key to understanding everything in your life. Now, why your life might be breaking apart at the seams or why you could ever be held together. Anyways, the gospel is a dependable message that explains and conforms to reality. It is a message chiefly about salvation. You see, I just read this from Ephesians chapter 2. If you want a little light reading to make you feel good about yourself later, once again this afternoon, read Ephesians chapter 2, 1 through 3, and look at who you are. The gospel is a message of God rescuing you from you. Rescue and deliverance from destruction. Here’s the deal. All peoples everywhere deserve to be destroyed because of their sin. And God is a just judge as Johnny sang about. And He is the one that does the destroying. Your sin can either have been destroyed in Jesus Christ on the cross 2,000 years ago and you believe this message or your sin can be destroyed with you in hell later. You get that choice. So what should you do? You should believe. Paul says believe. Believing is not simply agreeing to a fact like 2 plus 2 equals 4 or Chick-fil-A is better than McDonald’s. Believing is Leaning upon totally. To believe something—that’s something you have all done. You believed that pew could hold you up. I don’t see anybody air squatting over any of those pews right now, saying, “I believe it could hold me, but I’m not actually going to place my trust in it.” You are all sitting in the pew. The gospel is like a pew that you must sit into with your full weight for you to get any of the benefits of. You must believe it. You must put your whole soul weight on the gospel.

So what’s the gospel? You see, God made all things for His glory. He made an entire universe dedicated to Him with Him in the very middle of it. But unfortunately, with Adam and Eve, we have all sinned, which means we have all come short of God’s good standard for us. That wouldn’t be so bad except for this: the wages of sin is death. You see, you have heard it said, “You shall not murder.” But I come to tell you that everybody who has ever been angry with their brother and cursed them in their heart is as bad as a murderer. Or you’ve also heard it said you shouldn’t commit adultery. I’m here to tell you that every man that looks at a woman with lust in his heart has committed adultery with her.

Sin is so much worse than we could ever imagine because it’s against a God who is so much better than we could ever grasp. We have all sinned. Every white lie, every selfish ambition, every moment of going against what God has said is good for you has created an uncrossable chasm and an unpayable debt between you and the Lord. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Indeed, God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So, if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. You will be sealed with the Spirit. You’ll be marked on your soul with the authority of God because everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

That is the gospel. That is the message of deliverance for you from the death that you deserve, which Christ has already died for you if you’ll just accept it. Man, we’ve all got to make a core decision about Jesus, because no one knows the day or the hour that either Christ will take us home or when He will return here. Someday soon. And it’s going to be sooner than you think. Your opportunity to trust in Him for salvation will be taken away.

Here’s the deal. I’ve heard Al preach an incredible funeral message. The owl, me, Billy Graham—nobody can preach somebody out of hell. Don’t let some other pastor get to your funeral and there be any question whatsoever if you have given yourself to Jesus Christ or not. In fact, if you don’t think that you’ve ever actually done that, I would invite you right now to tune out what I’m saying, because you’ve already been given a dependable message about reality upon which you should lean. And I want you to listen with intent to obey, and that you would close your eyes and that you would just tell God what is true about you—that you already know the Holy Spirit is pointing out right now that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness. You would ignore me for the next few moments and you would just have a moment with the Lord.

Everyone who embraces the gospel is supposed to have a spiritual relationship with God. So, how do you do that? A little acronym for you. You could take this home today. You swap your control for God’s. See, this is how I met the Holy Spirit in Indonesia. I was exposed to the Bible teaching of another missionary. His name was Steve Smith, and Steve was a guy that knew what it meant to walk with the Lord. And he developed this little acronym based off of Scripture in his own life. It’s called SWAP. It’s this: that you would surrender to God’s will and Word. You would wait on God in prayer. You would avoid sin—let God root it out—and that you would pursue the promptings of the Spirit.

We’ll leave those up there for a moment so you can keep writing those down. Surrendering to God’s will and His Word requires that you would read the Bible on your own this week. You have never met A growing Christian who has become a spiritual giant who did not read their Bible for themselves. Man, develop a habit of reading the Bible intentionally. Spend your best moments of your waking hours in God’s Word. And just like the rain that is falling, which will produce fruit, God’s Word will fall on you and it will produce fruit in your life. You will come to know what God’s will is as you read His Word. But not only reading His Word, you would wait on God in prayer. Man, we all come to moments where we need some divine help about a decision to make, a conversation to have, a career choice to go through. Don’t let that moment be the first time you get serious about prayer. I’m encouraging you to develop a regular habit of prayer where you ask God questions and you sit in silence and you let Him have some space to speak.

Of course, you’re going to have to avoid some sin, too. Sin is like the static on the TV of your soul as you’re trying to watch the football game or the basketball game or daytime television. Sin is like the static that gets in the way of the signal so you can’t actually enjoy what you’re supposed to be watching. Sin works the same way in our lives. It muddies the picture. It drowns out the voices. It just makes it a honestly it’s a bad experience. So, you’re going to want God to get that out. So, you’re going to submit your life to Him. You’re going to ask Him. People are laughing because I think young folks don’t know what static is anymore on their TVs. You would ask God to get that stuff out of your life.

And then finally, you would pursue the promptings of the Spirit. I fully believe Christianity is spiritual, which means God speaks to us. And I wish it was in the same way that I’m speaking to you right now, but it’s not always that way. Sometimes it is. Usually what happens is it’s more like you’re walking in a crowd and you feel bumped to the side and it’s led you down a different path toward a different thing than you were walking toward originally. And you’re just kind of going through your life and you get bumped. Those bumps, those nudges of the Spirit are God talking to you. And as you grow more accustomed to reading and listening to those bumps, your relationship with God will grow more spiritual and you will hear Him better. If you give me just a few more minutes of your time.

So, we saw that the Holy Spirit is promised to Christians. The Holy Spirit seals Christians. The final proof that Christianity is spiritual is this. The Holy Spirit secures Christians. Verse 14, look at it again. The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of His glory. We saw last week that the inheritance is not just what you gain in Jesus. It’s also Jesus gaining you. The fact that the Holy Spirit is inside of you is a display. It is a proof that God will one day bring you home to Himself and one day we will all be around the throne of Jesus singing worship to Him. The Spirit is like a first installment of this inheritance and His presence now guarantees that more is coming later.

You see, a day is coming when God’s plan for this current earth will be finished. And we will enjoy a totality of spiritual life with God. And God will enjoy the totality of our worship for Him. There will be no more competing affections, no more distractions, no more frustrations, no more temptations. A day is coming when we are done battling the difficult stuff of this life and we’ll be fully joined with God. Until then, may we embrace the gospel. We submit our lives to God and the Holy Spirit. We swap our control for His and we enjoy an eternal security that has been bought for us through the blood of Jesus Christ.

The final song we’re going to sing this morning is “I Surrender All.” Some of us in this room, I believe, need to surrender our lives to God by swapping control. We’ve been sealed by Him, but we struggle to give the functional control of our lives to this Holy Spirit. And I would ask that as you sing “I Surrender All,” you make it a prayer. God, I surrender to You. Use me. Do with me whatever You want to do. I surrender to You.

And there’s some others in this room. I fully believe they need to surrender their lives to God in salvation. That you would enjoy the gospel. You would embrace the good news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Let “I Surrender All” be a prayer of self-dedication back to you, of you listening to the good news of God’s grace with some intention to obey it. And I’ll be down front to pray with either. Bow your heads and close with me, please.

Father, thank You, Jesus. Thank You. Thank You for these spiritual blessings that we have in You, Jesus. Holy Spirit, thank You for coming and not just resting upon individuals for a task, but also filling us completely for our lifetime. Holy Spirit, help us to swap our control for Yours. Man, give us hearts and souls that would hear Your voice. And for the person in the room that has never placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ for their salvation and their rescue, please get a hold of them right now. Holy Spirit, rebirth their souls. They would walk in freedom from sin and temptation. Please. And God, would You send us out of here as ambassadors of a good news that this world desperately needs to hear? Please, Lord, we love You. Amen.