Let's take our Bibles and turn together to Romans chapter 8.
I really appreciate your praying for us as we travel the last couple of weeks.
I took the opportunity to rest during that time.
I did not preach, but I did teach one Sunday school lesson at the church where I had formerly
pastored and where my wife's family all now attends and where we attend when we're with
them on vacation.
I had promised a year ago to teach the older women's class.
And if there's anybody you don't disappoint or offend, it's the older women in a church,
and I wasn't about to do that to them.
They've been very supportive in my ministry in the past.
And because I had promised them a year ago, I decided I'd teach them, and we had a good
time together in John chapter 1.
I was obligated to them, you see, because of my word.
There are different kinds of obligations.
We've been looking at the obligation we have to the Holy Spirit in this part of Romans
chapter 8.
Read with me as we begin in verse 12.
You follow along in your Bible as I read out loud.
So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh to live according to the
flesh.
For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die.
But if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received
the spirit of adoption as sons.
By which we cry out, Abba, Father.
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and of
children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with
Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.
Even though it does not specifically say that our obligation is to the Holy Spirit,
that is the clear implication.
We are not obligated to the flesh, but we are obligated to the Holy Spirit.
The reason for that is because of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
The last time we were together, we saw that the Holy Spirit empowers the Christian.
Verse 13.
He empowers us that we might put to death the deeds of the body and thus live.
You and I cannot put to death the deeds of the body or the lureings of the flesh in our
own strength, but the Holy Spirit enables us, once we have determined and chosen to
take that direction, that we might consistently put to death the deeds of the body.
So He empowers us.
The last time we talked about how we can appropriate that power of the Holy Spirit, we don't have
time today to go into all of that again, but if you weren't here, I encourage you to borrow
one of the tapes from us or buy one if you wish and listen to that.
It's one of the keys to a productive, fruitful Christian life, the empowering of the Holy
Spirit.
Not that that message says everything that could be said about the subject, but at least
it will get you started in the right direction.
In verse 14, we see a second work of the Holy Spirit, which we want to look at today in
part, and that is that He leads the believer.
This ties together with Galatians 5.18, which says in essence the very same thing, that
those who are led by the Spirit of God are not under the law.
A different thrust there, and yet the same truth is involved, those who are being led
by the Holy Spirit.
They are God's children, as it says here, the sons of God.
The verb is in the present tense.
In other words, it's a continuous experience.
For all who are being led continually by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.
This leading of the Holy Spirit is an evidence that one is genuinely a Christian.
He does not say those who are filled with the Holy Spirit are being led by the Spirit
of God.
But He says all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.
So that leading of the Holy Spirit, whatever that is, and we'll talk about that in a moment,
is proof that one is genuinely a child of God.
Notice too that that verb is passive.
Those who are being led, allowing themselves, in other words, to be led, these are the sons
of God.
This idea of being led by the Spirit is not only said to be the experience of the Christian,
but it was the experience of the Lord Jesus Christ too.
There's one specific instance in His life where that is clearly stated.
In Luke chapter 4, we have a record of that.
It says in the first verse of that chapter, and Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned
from the Jordan and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days.
The idea here is that He was thrust forth, or He was impelled, as Mark puts it.
Luke says He was led about by the Holy Spirit for 40 days in the wilderness.
And interestingly, the same verb is used again in verse 9 where it says, and He, Satan, led
Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand in the pinnacle of the temple.
The idea here means that Satan conducted Him, that Satan took Him along to the pinnacle
of the temple.
And so we have some insight there as to what this verb really means, being led, of the
Spirit.
It means to be conducted.
It means to be led about.
Mark tells us in a parallel passage, it means to be impelled, to be thrust.
So those who are being led about, those who are being conducted by the Holy Spirit, these
are the sons of God.
What is this leading?
Well, it's more than God's direction in a particular isolated decision.
The leading of the Holy Spirit, the conducting of the Holy Spirit that is mentioned here
of the believer, embraces His responsibility for lifelong guidance.
It's not that the Holy Spirit leads me in that situation or in this instance, but it
is that throughout my whole life, the Holy Spirit acts as a shepherd to guide me.
Now immediately when I say the word shepherd, there should come to your mind one of the
Psalms, and that is which one?
Psalm 23.
Let's turn back there just a moment, take a look at that.
This work of shepherding the believer is the work of the Holy Spirit of God.
David writes, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside quiet waters.
Here we have provision as a part of His guidance.
He says, because of the shepherd that I have, I don't need anything.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures, sheep like that.
He leads me beside the quiet pools of water.
Sheep will not drink from a rushing stream.
They have to have a pool where it's quiet and still.
And so as our shepherd, the Holy Spirit gives us provision for our needs so that we are
sustained.
It goes on to say, He restores my soul.
Sheep are easily agitated.
They're upset, they're nervous creatures.
Sometimes Christians are too.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to restore us.
He says He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His namesake.
The Holy Spirit leads us in sanctification for the name of the Lord.
By the way, that means in honor of who He is, in consistency with who He is.
He says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for Thou art with me.
Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.
The Holy Spirit leads us even sometimes in the way of chastisement, doesn't He?
Faithfully.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
Thou hast anointed my head with oil, my cup overflows, the abundance you see.
Surely goodness and loving kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell
in the house of the Lord forever.
The Holy Spirit, who is responsible to guide me as a son of God, will some day deliver
me safe to my final destination.
And so I have provision, I have restoration, I have sanctification, I have chastisement
under the loving hand of God.
I have protection so that I know I'm going to reach home.
Those who are being led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
Christian, do you realize who you are?
You are a prince in God's new order of things.
His kingdom, which is now invisible but yet very real in our lives, will some day be expressed
visibly and literally not only in this world but throughout the whole universe.
You are a prince of that kingdom.
You are a sharer in it and of it.
And therefore the Holy Spirit of God is carefully, constantly leading you as a son of God.
We have to be careful of a stubborn spirit.
The natural thing is that the Holy Spirit leads us, but it's possible for you and for
me to allow a rebellious attitude to creep into our lives.
And that's dangerous.
If prolonged, it can lead to spiritual stagnation and even spiritual ruin.
If a person has an enduring stubborn spirit that is never broken, it is probably evidence
of his true spiritual state that he's not truly a son of God.
We sons of God are sometimes rebellious.
But God does work on that rebellion.
In Philippians chapter 2 it says, For it is God who works in you both to will and to do
of his good pleasure.
In other words, God puts our wills under pressure and he begins to mold and to manipulate it
in the best of sense so that what we ultimately choose to do will be what he wants us to do.
It's God who works in us both the willing and the doing of his good pleasure.
Have you ever experienced a time when you said, well boy, that's something I would
never do, and yet over a period of time, in fact, you choose to do that very thing?
There was a time in my life when I said I would never be a pastor.
I was interested in other avenues of work for the Lord, but the pastorate had no allurement
to me whatsoever.
And I can remember a number of times saying, that is not what I choose to do.
And yet over the process of time, you see, God worked on my will until that point that
I chose to do the very thing before I said I wouldn't do.
That's what it means when it says the Holy Spirit leads us.
If however one is resilient and rigid and refuses the leading of the Spirit of God,
it's evidence that God has not done a real work in his life.
Dr. Linsky said, the point is that God's Spirit naturally leads God's sons, shapes
their entire conduct.
It could not be otherwise.
If they were led by some other spirit or were going their own way, they could not be God's
sons.
One can tell who God's sons are by noting who is being led by God's Spirit and who
is not thus led.
Are you being led by God's Spirit?
Is he conducting you along the way?
If he is not, then you are not his son of God.
Now if there is today some point of resistance in your life, then God is going to be working
over your will to change that.
He will work in you the willing and the doing of his good pleasure.
How happy it is when we recognize that stubbornness and we repent of it.
And that may be where you are today, I don't know.
There may be some issue that has arisen between you and God and you have said, God, I will
not.
That rebellion today is creating a lot of friction in your life.
Today what your need is is to repent of it, confess that to the Lord.
Will you do it today?
Go on being led by the Spirit of God?
There could not be a happier state for any human being than what is described in this
verse in Romans chapter 8.
To be led by the Spirit of God.
Down in verse 15 we have another work of the Holy Spirit.
The second one that we'll look at today, actually the third in our list.
It is that he encourages the believer.
God has designed that we should have confidence before him.
Although he is majestic, high and holy and awesome in greatness, yet God provides for
intimacy with himself for such lowly ones as we.
And that intimacy is based upon a loving relationship.
You see, we are not God's slaves, though we gladly confess that we are slaves of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
But God has not called us his slaves, but rather he has called us his sons.
That's emphasized in verse 15 where it says, you have not received a spirit of slavery
leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit or the spirit of adoption as sons
by which we cry out Abba, Father.
He speaks about the attitude or the spirit of slavery, and that was the spirit of our
pre-conversion days.
As it says in Hebrews 2.15, the Christ came that he might deliver those who through fear
of death were subject to slavery all their lives.
Slavery and fear go together because a slave has no assurances.
His very existence is at the very whim of his master, and that's the way we were before
we were saved.
We were dominated by the power of darkness.
Satan was our master.
We were under the dominion of sin.
But now we've not received that spirit.
We have received the spirit of adoption as sons, not as slaves.
And that sonship has provided for an intimate communion with God.
It allows us to cry out, and the word here means learning to cry, with deep emotion,
to shout to God, Abba.
What a term that is, to think that you and I could approach God with that term, because
that term is an Aramaic term which manifests the closest kind of a father-child relationship.
It's a word that connotes dearness, and we could bring it into our vernacular today legitimately
as daddy.
This is Father's Day, and those of you who have the joy of being a dad know how delightful
it is when that little baby first says, Dada.
Of course, that's the first thing they ever say, isn't it?
They may say other words like mama before that, but you never really hear it distinctly
like you hear dada, right?
That comes across.
And it's the most beautiful sound.
If you don't have children, it's difficult for you to understand what I'm talking about.
But as you look down at that little one and you hear those words, it does something to
you inside.
It's a warm feeling.
There's such an intimacy involved in that.
And you see, that's what the Holy Spirit allows us to do with God.
God has given us the spirit of adoption so that we can say daddy.
Do you know God on that kind of a basis?
Do you know Him that intimately?
You see, that's what He really wants.
He wants that.
The kind of relationship that God wants with you as His Son is not a distant, cold relationship,
not a formal thing, but God wants you to come close to Him and to, as it were, be cuddled
in His arms and whisper into His ear, daddy.
The Holy Spirit encourages us to know that kind of intimacy.
The very same truth is given in Galatians chapter 4 where it says that God has sent
forth the spirit of His Son into our hearts, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
This concept of adoption is a very significant one, too.
It is not as though God has adopted us as strangers into His family as we think of adoption,
but this term adoption is based upon Roman law in that day.
A father would adopt his son in the sense of placing him into the family as an adult
at a certain point.
Even his own-born son would receive adoption when the father chose.
What it signified was that at that point on he was an adult, no longer to be considered
as a child.
It was not only a matter of property, inheritance, but a matter of civil status before the government
as well.
It involved, from that point on, a sharing of obligations and rights.
It was such a union as to imply that this is my other self.
That's what adoption was all about.
What the Holy Spirit has done has brought to us that relationship to God.
We are His children, as we will see in a moment, but we are also His sons.
That was a term that John, the apostle, for example, never used of us.
He reserved son of God for the Lord Jesus Christ and refers to believers as God's
children.
But the apostle, being led by the Spirit of God, also chooses to use the word sons referring
to us.
He says that we have been placed into God's family as His sons.
The very moment that you are saved, this happens to you.
At the instant that you are born into God's family, you are also adopted, which means
that from that time on, everything that God has is at your disposal.
You may not know how to use it, how to appropriate it, but there is nothing more that you need
as a child of God.
Everything is yours at that point.
You cannot grow and increase in what you can possess.
You may grow in your appropriation of it, you may grow in your understanding of it,
but the whole thing is yours at that moment.
You are God's son.
You are adopted.
Now with that as a background, remember again that God wants to know intimacy with you as
His adult son.
He wants to hear you whisper into His ears, Abba, Father.
It is such a tragedy when a child and parent are separated, and oh the grief that comes
to the heart of a father or a mother when a child refuses to acknowledge that relationship
with them.
And there are instances of that that are multiplied.
The heart of parents break because a child refuses to be intimate, to speak with, to
acknowledge parental relationship.
Now if you and I feel that on a human level, how do you think God feels when you and I
as His sons refuse to speak with Him?
Or we draw away from Him?
Or we are cold toward Him?
Of course, the heart of our Father is grieved by that.
Because the thing that He desires so earnestly is what the Holy Spirit tries to encourage,
and that is our drawing near enough to say, Daddy, Father.
Are you in that kind of speaking terms with God today?
The Holy Spirit is trying to encourage it in your life if you are a Christian.
What is it that is keeping you away from it?
Will you deal with it?
Will you?
Let's take a look once more into our text, verses 16 and 17.
We'll see here the final work of the Holy Spirit in our text.
That is that He witnesses to the believer.
He testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.
Here the Apostle uses that other word than sons.
He calls us here the technon of God, the born ones of God.
Sons is a legal status with God, but here is that personal relationship that entitles
us to our inheritance.
The Spirit bears witness, testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.
Do you know that today?
Is there that inner witness with your spirit?
By the way, you know in the Bible it takes two witnesses for something to be established,
doesn't it?
And the implication is here that first there is our witness by which we cry out Father.
And then joining that first witness is a second witness, the witness of the Holy Spirit.
He bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
Do you have that inner witness?
That blessed assurance that Jesus is yours?
God wants you to have that, and frankly it's more than something that's subjective.
The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit by producing in our lives works, good works.
And it is that production of fruit in our lives that gives us great assurance that we
are children of God.
As John Stott said regarding this witness, it is God's word as heard in our inner hearts.
It is God's work as seen in our lives.
This witness of the Holy Spirit is not only a little voice down inside, but it is the
production of fruit.
It is the evidence that we are children of God because of the change that takes place
in the way that we live.
And he says if we are God's children, we are heirs of God.
In other words, God has us as his heirs.
The Lord Jesus Christ will inherit all things, but he says here that we are fellow heirs
with Christ.
In other words, we share equally with the Lord Jesus Christ and all that God would give
to him, which is everything he's created.
Now you stop and think about that.
I don't know if you've ever inherited anything or not.
I never have.
I don't ever expect to really.
If you've not been an heir, it may be difficult for you to identify with this as it is for
me.
And yet the truth is still there.
When we inherit something, it means that we have gotten it not because of what we've
done necessarily, but because of who we are.
It's because of a relationship.
And because of our relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, you and I are God's
heirs.
And everything that he would pass on, you will share in with the Lord Jesus Christ.
There's also another thought here that's involved with Roman law, and it was this.
When it came time for the inheritance to be experienced, all of the heirs had to be present
to experience it together.
It could not be portioned out to them at different times and places.
You know what that means?
That means that before the Lord Jesus Christ can officially receive his inheritance from
the Father, you and I have to be with him.
If you as a child of God should somehow be lost and not be there on that day, then no
one will get any inheritance because you are part of the family.
You are an heir of God.
So it's another indication of the security that you and I have as God's children.
We are his heirs and joint heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit makes that real.
He witnesses that to us.
He gives us that inner assurance that we are God's children and that as we have suffered
with him, we are going to be also glorified with him.
D.L. Moody said, never tell a man he's converted.
Never tell him he's saved.
Allow the Holy Spirit to reveal that to him.
Has the Holy Spirit revealed that to you?
Do you have confidence within your own heart that you are a child of God, one of his born
ones?
Now, it's possible to have salvation without assurance.
It is.
I had that for several years.
It's possible to have salvation without assurance.
But you know, it's also possible to have assurance without salvation.
What do I mean by that?
I believe it's possible for some people to base their assurance on some experience or
some prayer that's prayed rather than on the witness of the Holy Spirit in their lives
as he produces the works and the transformation.
I've heard people say, and maybe you have too, well, I was born again back in 65, but
I haven't lived much like a Christian.
That's probably because he isn't one.
He may have assurance that he is based upon something that happened back then, but my
friend, if there is no change in the life, if there's no evidence, there's no fruit,
then that assurance is probably a false assurance.
And there's been no new birth.
He's no child of God.
It's possible to have salvation without assurance, but it's also possible to have assurance without
salvation.
I don't mean to throw a cloud into your life or to make you doubt what the Spirit of God
may have genuinely done, but I ask you this, on what is the assurance that you have based?
Is there really proof by the work of the Spirit in your life that you are a child of God?
If so, then rejoice in what is yours in Christ.
But if today you don't have assurance that's based upon the Spirit's witness, then your
need today would be to be saved.
I pray that God will help you to do the thing you ought to do.
Now assurance is something that grows.
It increases as we walk with the Lord.
And frankly, as we as believers live in disobedience, assurance shrinks.
It's possible for a Christian to be so out of the will of God that he has no assurance
he's a Christian at all, and yet he still may well be.
Assurance is rather subjective.
We have to evaluate it closely.
But how is your heart with God this morning?
Has the Spirit of God done a work in your life?
Is he witnessing to you that you're a child of God?
Is he encouraging you today to draw near to God and to say, Daddy?
Is he leading in your life, providing for you?
Are you responding with a yielded spirit, surrendered to the Lordship of Christ, or
are you in rebellion today?
I pray that the work of the Spirit of God in our lives would be such that before we
walk out of this church today, the Lord Jesus Christ will have his way with each of us.
Father, may that be true in my life completely, and the life of each person who is listening
to me right now.
We thank you for the gracious work of the Spirit of God.
And our prayer is that even as we close this service, you would bring to consummation your
working in our lives.
That there's someone here today, Father, who needs to trust the Savior, who's never
been born into your family, may do that today.
There's a child of yours who's away from you, who's distant, who's cold in his relationship
to you.
May today draw near.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.