Fruit of the Spirit Series - Part Two
The walking dead.
The next time you.re in a public place what I want you to do is I want you to stand there and look at all the people around you and I want you to realize that most of them are the walking dead. They know nothing about life in the Spirit. And that.s not what God wants. God wants to breathe into them the breath of life so that they might have His power, His energy, His joy, His peace. That.s what life in the Spirit is all about.
Do you realize what man is like apart from God? Apart from God, mankind is simply the walking dead. What I want to do as we talk about life in the Spirit is I want you to understand that when God created man it was God in man. God breathed into man the breathe of life. Man became a living soul and man therefore was to rule on the face of this earth. Man was God.s vice-regent, His CEO of the kingdom. He was about kingdom business.
But then man decided instead to listen to the serpent, then man took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and said I don.t need God, I can run my own life.
So Ephesians, chapter 2 tells us what man is like before the life of Christ comes into him. And it says in chapter 2 of Ephesians and you want to look at it, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked.” It.s the walking dead. “In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working,” where? “In the sons of disobedience.”
And when the spirit works in the sons of disobedience there.s no life; they are dead. They.re the living dead. They.re the walking dead. And it says, “Among them we too.” And Paul is saying I was that way. We all were that way. We too, all, all, all. He.s not southern. He.s not saying you all. He.s saying, “We all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we were by nature, children of wrath, even as the rest.”
In other words, once man sinned and God evacuated from man, then man was simply dead. Man had no life. Man walked according to the prince of this world. Now, what happens to man in that condition? Well, I want to go back because in our last program what we did is we skipped over this and I want you to see this and I want you to understand this, because I want you to look at mankind as God looks at mankind.
I want you to have a biblical world-view because we can look at people and they.re nice and they.re pleasant and everything. But you know what? If they don.t have God in them then they.re dead in their trespasses and sins. And what.s going to happen to them? In Revelation chapter 20, verse 12. Now this is the end of everything. This is the end of this present earth and these present heavens and they flee away.
And what happens it says in verse 12, “And I saw the dead, the great and the small.” It doesn.t matter whether they were kings. It doesn.t matter whether they were just common laborers. “I saw the dead, great and small standing before the throne,” standing before the very throne of God. “And the books were opened.”
And God opens the books. God is keeping books. And you need to know that. God keeps books. If you ever do a study of that, you.ll see that there are different books that the Bible talks about. One of them is in Malachi and it.s a book of remembrance and God.s watching. And when you do something wonderful, it.s in the book and God is going to reward you for that.
Well, “the books were opened this time and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead,” now here again, they.re the walking dead. They.re the living dead. “And the dead were judged from the things written in the books, according to their deeds.” (Revelation 20:12)
Now remember, when you.re dead in trespasses and sins you.re walking as a child of wrath. You.re walking as a son of disobedience. You.re walking according to the lusts of your mind, the desires of your flesh. I mean you.re blowing it. You.re blowing it. You.re missing what God had for you and what life is all about, life in the Spirit.
And so it goes on to say this. “And the sea gave up the dead, which were in it. And death and Hades gave up the dead, which were in them and they were judged, everyone of them, now watch, according to their deeds.” (Revelation 20:13) Why? Because the deeds show what.s inside. The deeds show whether there.s any life inside, whether there.s any power to do what is right, to do what is good, to do what is pleasing to God, whether there.s any power inside for you to be righteous before God. So without God, you are dead and so this is what happens.
But now watch what he says because this is so key. It says, “And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:14) And what he.s saying is this, when you and I were created, God meant for Him to be in us to give us life so that we might understand and walk in life in the Spirit. But when we sinned we lost the Spirit of God.
Now let me just show you this very quickly by taking you to Titus, okay. And as we go to Titus, all the T.s are, in the New Testament they.re all together. I thought God that is so neat of You. Thessalonians, the longest one.s first, then Timothy, then Titus and they all come before Hebrews.
When you come to Titus chapter 3 it says this, verse 4: “But when the kindness of God, our Savior and His love for mankind appeared,” and this is through Jesus, “He saved us, not on the basis of our deeds, which we have done in righteousness.” (Titus 3:4-5a)
Even if you look at these people that are the walking dead, and they.re nice people and they.re doing good things, if they don.t have God in them, even though they.re doing good things, still they are dead in their trespasses and sins. Nice, but dead, the walking dead.
So he goes on to say, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds, which we have done in righteousness.” We hear the Ten Commandments; we try to keep the Ten Commandments. “But, according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration.” Regeneration there means rebirth. “And renewing,” now you want to mark this, “by the Holy Spirit.” (Titus 3:5)
So remember we.re marking every reference to the Holy Spirit. Right now, if you can.t do anything else, color it yellow and then come back and put one corner of the triangle and then a cloud on those lines so that you have the same mark for the Holy Spirit all the way through the Bible. Because remember what we.re doing is we.re studying inductively. We.re going straight to the Word of God because you have to know truth. These are the very words of God. And these Words are Spirit and they are life, as we will see later.
All right now, in the light of this I want you to go back to Revelation chapter 22, the last book of the Bible. We looked at this in our last program. But in Revelation chapter 22, in verse 17 we have the last mention of the Holy Spirit. And it says, “And the Spirit and the bride says, „Come..”
Now who is the bride? Well the bride is part of the body of Jesus Christ, okay. So the Spirit is saying come to the living dead, to the walking dead. And the bride is saying hey, come, come, because I want you to experience life. So it says, „The Spirit and the bride say, „Come.. And let the one who hears come and let the one who is thirsty come.”
Why? Because you are going to “take of the water of life,” listen carefully, “without cost.” There.s nothing that you have to do when you are simply dead except come to God and then you “take the water of life without cost.”
All right, now, I want us to go back and I want us to move from the Old Testament to the New Testament. I want us to see how God is going to take man, who is absolutely, totally, completely dead and lifeless and dead in trespasses and sins, the walking dead and how He.s going to take that walking dead person that comes to Him and says hey, I am thirsty, I am sick of life like this. I want power. I want energy. I want purpose. I want peace. I want love. I want to know how from my very gut of my being to be kind, to be faithful to God, to be gentle to others. I want to know all this. I want to know this self-control so that I am not driven by my passions that get me in trouble.
So how is God going to do this? Well I want us to go to Isaiah. I love the book of Isaiah. And I want us to see how God is going to bring us, because we.re dead in our trespasses and sins, how He is going to bring us to life in the Spirit. So I want you to go to Isaiah and we.re going to go to Isaiah chapter 11. And I want you to turn there because you see it.s so important.
When you go to church, you take your Bible. When you listen to anybody, when you go to anybody.s conference and in many, many conferences they never tell you to open the Bible. If I.m ever speaking, it doesn.t matter if it.s a luncheon, it doesn.t matter what it is, bring your Bible, because you.re going to need it.
Well, in Isaiah 11, verse 1 it says, “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” (11:1-2) Oh, wouldn.t you like wisdom and understanding? Wouldn.t you like strength? Wouldn.t you want the knowledge of God? You say how do I get it? We.ll talk about it after this break.
When God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul and then man chose to listen to the serpent, and man chose to walk his own way, and God withdrew from man, so to speak, because man then died. He became dead in his trespasses and sins. God didn.t throw him aside and say to hell with you. He didn.t say that.
Why? Because it.s not the heart of God. The heart of God is “God is love.” That.s the character, that.s the very nature of God.s being. In 1 John chapter 4 it says God is love. Here in is love, not that you and I first came to God and said O God, I love you, please accept me back. No, it.s that we were dead in our trespasses and sins and so God looked at us and He said this is My creation. I don.t want My creation to be lifeless. I don.t want My creation to go to hell. I don.t want My creation to experience death two times. Instead I.m going to redeem My creation. I am a Redeemer.
And if you can just remember that beloved, saved or lost. Lost means that you.re dead right now. Saved means that God is in you. You may not be walking all, in the power of the Holy Spirit. You may be grieving the Spirit. You may be quenching the Spirit, as the Bible says. But I can tell you this: that it is God.s heart, Precious One, to redeem you. He looks at us when we were sinners, when we are dead in our trespasses and sins, when we are without hope, when we are helpless, when we are lifeless and, He loves us and He wants to bring us to Him.
So how is He going to do it? Well, remember we left off at Isaiah chapter 11. He.s going to have to send a redeemer. Now what do we need to know about Jesus? Well, where is Jesus going to come from? Isaiah 11 tells us this: “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse.” (Verse 1) Now the stem of Jesse, it means, all right, here just imagine all right, here there is a stem in a vase and then there.s going to come from that stem, there.s going to come a shoot from that stem. It.s going to become a branch you know, part of the vine.
All right, now, who is Jesse? Jesse is the father of David. And from David a branch will bear fruit and from David will come Jesus Christ. And then it tells you this: “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him.”
Now what is that Spirit like? It.s a spirit of wisdom. Wisdom is understanding and fearing God and knowing how to do the right thing and not messing up. It.s the spirit of understanding. It means that you can look at things, and you can evaluate them. You say, hey, I understand that. You see when I talk to you, if you don.t look at the masses, as the walking dead, you don.t have any understanding of what God has told us in this Word.
It says the spirit of counsel. Counsel is okay, what do I do? Where do I go? How do I handle this?
The spirit of strength; in other words, when the Holy Spirit comes into you, then there.s strength, there.s power, there.s energy.
And it says, “And the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” Now what he.s doing is he.s going to show us man is dead in his trespasses and sins. Man needs a redeemer. The Redeemer is going to be the Messiah, the Christ, upon whom the Spirit of God will rest and it says, “and He,” this Messiah, “will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what His eyes see and He will not make a decision but by what His ears hear.”
In other words He.s going to go beyond what His eyes see and what His ears hear, but He.s going to have true understanding. And it says, “With righteousness He will judge the poor and the afflicted of the earth and etc.” (Isaiah 11:4a)
All right, now as you look at that, I want you to move to Isaiah 42:1, “Behold My servant whom I uphold, My servant whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him.” It.s a prophecy about Jesus Christ. And it.s talking about His servant who is from the stem of Jesse, a branch that springs forth. And it says, “My chosen one in whom My soul delights; I have put My Spirit upon Him.” (42:1a)
So what we.re going to see is see man as God intended man to be. But it.s going to be the God-man. Now from verse 2, “He will not cry out or raise His voice, nor make His voice heard in the street. A bruised reed He will not break; a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish.”
In other words if He sees someone that is bruised, He sees somebody that.s battered, He.s not going to come down on top of them like that and say just, I just want to crush you even more. It.s not the Redeemer.s heart because He.s a God of love. And if He sees this burning wick, He.s not just kind of hot, and trying to have a flame, He.s not going to quench it because that.s not His task.
So now from here I want us to go to Isaiah 61, Isaiah 61 and I hope that you.re turning in your Bible with me and that you.re marking every reference to the Spirit. If nothing else, at least color it yellow. All right, Isaiah chapter 61; this is a prophecy again. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” (61:1-2a)
God looks out and He sees this walking dead. He sees them dead in trespasses and sins. He sees them headed for the second death. He sees them headed for the lake of fire where they.ll spend eternity in flames and torment, where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched. And He wants to grab them and He wants to rescue them and He wants to say, hey, hey, I know you.re broken hearted. I know you.re a captive. I know that whosoever commits sin becomes the slave of sin. And I know that it.s taking you deeper and deeper down into sin. And I know that life is becoming more yucky and more empty and I know that you don.t like it and I know that you don.t want to be there and I.m going to redeem you. I.m going to buy you back out of that slave market of sin. I.m going to get you and rescue you from that death and that lake of fire that awaits you. I don.t want you to go to hell. I don.t want you to spend eternity separate from Me. So this is what I.m going to do; I.m going to send the Messiah. I.m going to send the Anointed One. I.m going to send the Son of God. I.m going to send to you the Christ and the Spirit of God is going to rest on Him.
Now watch. The Spirit of God that rests on Jesus is the same the Spirit that God wants to give you. Did you get that? The Spirit of God that rests on Jesus is the same Spirit that God wants to give you. And that.s what life in the Spirit is all about.
O beloved; listen to me carefully. If you know that you lack wisdom, if you know that life is purposeless, then this is what you need to do: you need to come to God. You need to cry out to Him. And you need to say I.m lifeless. I.m without strength. I.m without hope. There.s a void in my life. I.m doing things I don.t want to do. I.m a slave. And God will say I.ve come to rescue you.
Will you believe that My Son will rescue you? Will you come to Him? Will you cry out? Will you ask Me to give you My Son? Because if I give you My Son, I.m giving you life and the Spirit of God that rests on Him is the Spirit that will rest in you
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