Today with Jeff Vines

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Puritans refer to the Holy Spirit as the expulsive
power of a new affection, which means that no addiction
has power over you. With the Spirit of God in you,
no sin is your master. You are freed from the
law of sinninette, you have the power of new light.
So the power of conviction is present, which is good news.
It means the Holy Spirit is in you. You have
the power to evict things from your life because of

(00:21):
the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Today, Today, Today, Today with Jeff Fines, pastor, apologist and
Bible teacher. Hello and welcome. This is Today with Jeff Finds.
We're continuing in the Dirt Road discipleship series. We're part

(00:43):
way through a message about being transformed by the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Jeff has been preaching from John chapter fifteen. Let's
continue now.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
The Puritans refer to the Holy Spirit as the expulsive
power of a new affection, which means that no addiction
has power over you. With the Spirit of God in you,
no sin any is your master. You are freed from
the law of sin and that you have the power
of new life. So the power of conviction is present,
which is good news. It means the Holy Spirit is
in you. But what most Christ followers don't understand is

(01:27):
the power of eviction is also in you. You have
the power to evict things from your life because of
the Holy Spirit. The reason that that doesn't happen more
than it should is because the truth it becomes a
matter of the Word, the will, and the Spirit. So
the truth of God's Word first has to enlighten you
the holiness. If you don't have that, where you're gonna go. Second,

(01:51):
the will then determines to pursue that holiness that's you,
and the spirit gives you the power to overcome it.
That order, and the reason we never make it past
first base is because most of us aren't familiar with
what the Word teaches about holy living, so we don't
know what is right and what is wrong. And then third, oh,

(02:11):
I love this. The Holy Spirit brings a greater sense
of feeling. Do you know that the Holy Spirit is emotional?
You can grieve the Holy Spirit. That's an emotion. And
you and I'm being created in the image of God,
which means we too are emotional creatures, which means we
desire to feel God, to experience God, to be overwhelmed

(02:34):
by His presence. We feel because God feels we are
emotional creatures, because God is an emotional creature. I love
the fact that the Bible teaches us that the Holy
Spirit bridges the gap between our spirit and God's spirit
and gives us the ability to experience God on a deep,

(02:55):
deep level. So as you read the psalms when we
talked about the psalms last week' stay with me now
is Psawm eighty four. I love this. How lovely is
your dwelling place, Lord Almighty. My soul yearns even faints
for the for the courts of God or the Lord.
My heart and my flesh cry out for the Living God.
I mean, how many of you. Every time you're on
your way to church, your heart's just jumping. I'm going

(03:18):
to church. Oh, I'm gonna meet with God. I'm gonna
beat with God's people. Oh, I'm so glad. Okay, even
the sparrow has found a home and to swallow, a
nest for herself where she may have her young, a
place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King, and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are
ever praising you. Better is one day in your course

(03:39):
than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper
in the house of my God than dwell in the
tents of the wicked. For the Lord God is a
son and shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No
good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. Lord,
Almighty blessed is the one who trust in you. I
love that that it's possible for you and I to

(04:01):
have this unbelievable feeling, an emotional experience with God that
we can't wait to be near Him. Now, now we
got that's important. I moved through it fast. So now
the gift of the Holy Spirit is to guide us,
to lead us, to encourage us, to counsel us in
His primary job is to conform us to the image
of his son by making us have a greater sense

(04:22):
of awareness, greater sense of olition, the ability power to do,
and the experience of God. Two questions emerge, and their
big ones. The first question is this, why does God
want to conform us to the image of his son.
This is a sermon of hisself. I'm just going to
give you the short answer and move to the final
part the answers evangelism. This is something I found in

(04:42):
a famous preacher's Diary someone that I really respect. Conformity
in Jesus is directly related to evangelism, because living a
life that reflects Christ's character and teachings becomes a powerful
testimony that naturally draws others to the Gospel, essentially acting
as a living example of the good news you are sharing.
It's not just about verbal proclamation, but also demonstrating the

(05:05):
transformative power of faith through your actions. The world is
looking for inconsistency in you. The Spirit is looking to
build consistency in you. And now here's the question, and
here is the purpose of this message. If the job

(05:28):
of the Spirit is listen now, is to conform me
to the image of Jesus Christ and creating me the
fruits of the spirit. Why is he doing such a
poor job? Why is he doing a poor job? Folks,
I'm sixty years old. I'm not supposed to say that,

(05:50):
but I am. Can you help me understand why I
struggle with actions and attitudes that I struggled with thirty
years ago that are not in harmony with the God
I love anybody else. When I was in ministry and

(06:11):
I was younger, I would say, man, what's wrong with people?
As you get older, you say, man, what's wrong with me?
Listen carefully. Hudson Taylor was a Christian missionary to China.
Founder of the China Inland Mission. Taylor spent fifty four
years in China. If you know his story, an amazing

(06:33):
man of God, I want you to listen to what
he wrote. My own position becomes continually more and more responsible,
and my need greater of special grace to feel it.
But I have continually to mourn that I follow at
such a distance and learn so slowly to imitate my
precious Master. I cannot tell you how I am buffetted

(06:53):
sometimes about temptation. I never knew how bad a heart
I had. Yet I do know that I love God,
and love his work, and desire to serve Him only
in all things. He's saying, the spirit of God is
present in me, the conviction of the Holy Spirit is present,
but my progress is slow. That's not the end of
Hudson Taylor's story. God sent a man into his life

(07:16):
by the name of John McCarthy. John was also a
missionary and had heard of Taylor's struggles, and he sent
him a letter. There are many believe that the letter
the words of the letter actually were first created by
Harriet Beecher Stowe. But here's what he said in the letter.
Pay close attention. How does a branch bear fruit? Not

(07:37):
by incessant effort for sunshine and air, not by vain
struggles for those vivifying influences which give beauty to the
blossom and verdure to the leaf. It simply abides in
the vine in silent and undisturbed union, and blossoms and
fruit appear as of spontaneous growth. How then, shall the

(07:58):
Christian bear fruit efforts and struggles to obtain that which
is freely given by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action,
on temptation, on dangers. No, there must be a full
concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ, a complete
surrender of the whole being to Him, a constant looking
to Him for grace. Christians in whom these dispositions are

(08:18):
once firmly fixed, go un calmly as the infant born
in the arms of its mother. Do you realize what
he's saying? He's summarizing John fifteen, I am divine, You
are the branches. If you remain in me and I
in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me,
you can do nothing if you do not remain in me.

(08:39):
You're like a branch that has thrown away. In rhyths,
such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask whatever you will, and it will be done. This
is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit
showing yourselves to be my disciples. Is it sinking in yet? Oh? Man?
You think you can be more holy by trying harder.

(09:04):
You tell yourself, I'm not gonna I'm gonna stop lying
like that. I'm gonna stop deceiving people. I'm gonna stop
manipulating people. I'm gonna really get better with my temper.
I am gonna stop being so bitter. I am gonna
be more forgiving. And you just list and list and list,
and then you go do it and it works for
a while, and then it's what two steps forward, three
steps back. That is not the way fruit comes into

(09:27):
your life. You don't produce it, you bear it. The
fruit in your life is a byproduct of something else
that's happening in your life. If you think you can
earn it or if you think you can go and
work really hard and be a better person, good luck
with that. Never gonna happen. You'll have some successes, but man,

(09:48):
will it be a bitter journey? Well, what are you saying?
I'm saying that Jesus himself said, the Holy Spirit produces
fruit when you remain in him, when you abide in him,
when you stay close to the vite. I mean, are
you familiar with the way a tree bears fruit. The
leaves of the tree have tiny pores called stoma, and

(10:09):
that enables the tree to take in carbon dioxide. Carbon
dioxide plus water plus sunlight equals glucose. So as the
water is lost through this stoma, an interesting thing happens.
It's like a necessary evil. Water is lost. But when
the water is lost, a negative pressure occurs where the

(10:30):
sap then is drawn up from the leaves, from the
roots to the branches to the leaves, and fruit is
a result. So that the roots and trunks are the
lifeline to the branches. If the branch is not connected
to the sap, then fruit has no way of being born.

(10:52):
So if you and I are the branches, we're not
designed to produce fruit. We're designed to have fruit produced
through us and the fruits of the spirit, beast, patients, kindness,
keep going. The problem with most of us, and we're
all guilty. I am chief of all sinners when it
comes to this. It's taken me forty years. The problem
with most of us. We think that if we try
harder to be good, we can actually achieve it. Jesus says,

(11:17):
you can't. That the fruit of the spirit is causing effect.
The fruit of the spirit Galatians five is love, joy, peace,
forbearance or patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against
such things, there is no law. What does he mean?
There is no law? What does that mean? It means
that things aren't going to come into your life by

(11:39):
trying harder to do them. It means that the branch
does not bear fruit by trying harder. That the branch
bears fruit because it's attached to the vine. It's the
vine that does the work. The fruit is the product
of the sap that runs from the vine into the branches.
See this helps us understand what Paul means in Galatians
two twenty. I have been crucified with crist I've died

(12:00):
to myself I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
The life I now live in the body. I live
by faith in the Son of God. I'm not only
saved by faith, I'm living by faith. I'm living by
Faith who loved me and gave himself for me. Well,
wait a minute. If I'm saved by faith, how am
I living by faith? I'm living by faith that as

(12:21):
I stay in close proximity to Jesus, fruit will occur.
The vine is Christ. I am the branch. I was
grafted in by grace through faith. Yes, the Holy Spirit
is in the sap that runs, that runs from the
vine into the branches. The branch lives, it grows, it
bears fruit, not by struggles and effort, but by simply

(12:43):
abiding until you get this. Oh, you're gonna struggle, and
you're gonna beat yourself up, and you're not gonna have
much joy. When I played basketball back in the good
old days, when I played basketball in college, the has
been that never was. Man, that just seems like yesterday.
You know. Remember we were playing Covenant College and look
Out Mountain, Tennessee, and they were rate fifteenth in the nation,

(13:06):
and we had beaten them at our place and it
was a great upset. And then I go to we
go to their place up in Chattanooga, and I'm one
of those guys, a player, you know, you know, athletes,
you know what I'm talking about. You go in the
locker room to get yourself psyched up. You're banging your
head against the locker. Wow. And so I was a captain.
So I leave the chair. What are we gonna do?
Destroy Covenant? Everybody says, you know who's going down Covenant?

(13:30):
Who's going to be crying after this game? Covenant? I
had all the Saints. Man. Ah, yeah, it was corny,
but a it was good in the eighties. Uh. And
then we went out and got drilled by thirty points.
So and the point I'm making this word is one thing.
Power is something totally different. Everybody can talk a good game.

(13:50):
And when it comes to this new life that we
have because of the spear done us, why do some
people exude with power and others? Man, it's just words.
And here's why. According to the Seave and the Sewer,
there are some people hear the gospel but it doesn't
take root, which means they don't understand it. And I
really believe that refers in our common day culture, to
people who think they found a loophole, to people as

(14:13):
you say, oh, Jesus saves me by the cross, I
believe in the cross, and then you have no intention
of discipleship or following him, and somehow you think that's okay.
There is no such thing as salvation without discipleship. There
is no such thing as salvation without sanctification. Can you
imagine me walking up to my wife and saying, I'll

(14:34):
marry you, but I don't really want to know you
and love you and meet your needs. When you tell
Jesus I'll take the salvation but I don't want the lordship,
it is the greatest insult you can give them. It
means you don't truly understand what he's done. And then
there's a group of people the word came to them
and they received it with joy, but they're too busy
to abide. And because they're too busy to abide, the

(14:57):
world chokes them out, just chokes out the gospel. And
then there's a whole group of people who do understand
it and who actually do want to live, and they
do want to produce fruit, but they think producing fruit
is producing fruit, and they say, man, I'm in. I'm
gonna conquer my ancher. I'm gonna conquer this addiction. I'm
gonna stop desiring women this way, I'm gonna stop gossiping.
And because they fail within the first six months, they leave. Well,

(15:17):
this Christianity is useless because you don't understand it yet.
Jesus says, it is impossible, impossible to bear fruit apart
from him. I am the vine. You are the branches.
If you remain in me and I and you, you
will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing,
So I say to you, won't buy the spirit, and
you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For

(15:39):
the flesh desires and what is contrary to the spirit.
Now notice the flesh, still caught, still desires what is
contrary to the spirit. Even after your conversion, doesn't go away,
and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They
are in confident with each other, so that you are
not to do whatever you want. But if you are
led by the spirit, you are not under the law.
Here we go again. Do you see what he's saying.

(16:01):
I'll stay with me. I gotta end this, but we've
got to close Well, he's saying that you can either
choose to live by the power of the Holy Spirit
bringing the sap to the branches, which results in bearing fruit,
or you can live under the law and the lag
tells you try really hard to be good, but it
always results in unrighteousness. It's your choice. Jesus makes a
clear blionation really between or delineation between the bine and

(16:28):
the branches. The two are not the same. He's the
vine where the branch is the common denominator is the sap. Okay,
So the question is how do we stay or abide
this at the end, how do we abide in the vine?
How do we stay in the vine? Now? I need
to end this with three little quick illustrations and then

(16:51):
we're done. You okay, but this is important series, and
you have to understand. I don't want to leave you
without complete understanding. Basically, what the Bible teaches you is
if you want to live the life that the Holy
Spirit is convicting you and empowering you to live, You're
not going to do it by working harder, trying harder.
You're going to do it by coming into close proximity
with Jesus. Well, the question is what does that look like?

(17:12):
You know what happens in Washington, d C. It's a
very interesting place. On one side of Washington, d C.
You've got the imposing Capitol Building, You've got the White
House Lawn. It's quite a spectacle. Famous people from all
over the world, celebrities, power brokers, politicians all journey every
year to the White House lawn or to the Capitol

(17:33):
Building legislating, lobbying, raising money for their cause. And when
they come, there's a lot of pomp and circumstance. A
lot of humbolou agents go before them, before them, announcing
their arrival. Airports are swapped, fans, supporters, the media. They're
all involved so they can make their statements and make
their mark on the world. What's really interesting. I have
you've ever been to Washington, d C. You've got that

(17:55):
on one side. And what's just across the river, a
town by the name sitting on the bluff overlooking the
city and Acostia. It's a ghetto, crime, drugs, hopelessness, sickness, suffering, desperation,
poor education, poor housing, children with little or no hope.
Just on the other side, it's the antithesis of the

(18:17):
White House and the White House lawn. It serves as
a natural divide. Politicians, reporters, celebrities don't cross over. But
on June nineteen eighty one, a very famous woman who
had won the nineteen seventy nine Nobel Peace Prize, came
to DC and immediately crossed the barrier, probably the most
famous person to who have visited the city in decades.

(18:39):
It was shocking because when she came, there was no announcement,
no airport spectacle, no press conference, no sense of entitlement,
expectation of praise. Who am I talking about? A little
Albanian woman dressed in white, getting out of her car,
walking up to the steps of the Assumption Catholic Church.
As soon as words circulated she was there, the press
hounded her. Her reporters crowded her everywhere she went, shovy

(19:02):
microphones in her face, trying to get a word. She
said nothing. She just smiled, until finally a reporter said,
what do you hope to achieve by coming here? And
she said, the joy of loving and being loved, To
do something for someone else, to lift up, encourage and
inspire the less fortunate. The press was dumbfounded because they
said everybody always has an agenda, what's yours? And there

(19:23):
was a gentleman who identified with Mother Teresa, who kind
of saw himself as on her team, and he said
to her, Mother Teresa, my vocation is to work for lepers.
Teresa stopped, turned around and said, your vocation is to
belong to Jesus. Do you realize she's echoing John fifteen.

(19:45):
What does a biding mean? It means that you stay
close to Jesus. How do you do that? Folks? This
is a fundamental attitude of a christ follower who is
a disciple. If you don't care about bearing fruit, you
got a bad case of grace abuse. And I'm not
sure you ever understood the gospel. But if you do
have a desire to bear fruit, but you're not having

(20:06):
a lot of joy John fifteen. And the work of
the spirit is for you, stop believing the lie that
you can just try harder and produce it, and stop
and pause and abide in the vine? How pasture Jeff,
How you saturate your life with him with every aspect

(20:27):
of him? Think about it. Everyone sits around something, Everyone
is dominated by something. Whatever that something is has the
greatest impact. If I abide in the gem, the fruit
is muscle and fitness. If I abide on my phone,
the fruit is an insatiable lust to be entertained. If
I abide in pornography, the fruit is insatiable lust period.

(20:50):
If I abide in food, the fruit is the destruction
of the Temple of God. What you abide or stay
close to, that one thing, that person has the greatest
influence on your life. When you abide in Christ, your
greatest desire is to be around Him. You enjoy his presence,
you love his word. You look forward togethering with his
people in the House of the Lord. You yearn for
prayer times. In worship, it doesn't mean that you go

(21:13):
on a mountain somewhere and just stay there. It means
that you go ahead and live your life. But the
thing you abide in most is worship and prayer and
thanksgiving and being around the people of God. These kind
of people, it dawned on me, this is the secret.
When you look at a person, man, they just got it.
They're not doing things any better than you are, except
then they're in the proximity of Christ. These are the

(21:33):
people who have worship music in their car everywhere they're going.
While they're working. They're the people who are are listening
to teaching from some of the greats. We call them
church rats because they always want to be in church.
They want to be with the people of it, They
want to hang around Jesus one Peter one thirteen. Therefore,
prepare your minds for action, keep sober and spirit, set

(21:53):
your hope completely on the grace to be brought to
you at the revelation of Jesus Christ Philippines four eight,
Brothers and assistants. Whatever it's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's right,
whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's commendable, if there's any excellence,
and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
The emphasis on the mind. What are you thinking about?
Why do you think you can constantly be entertained by

(22:14):
ungodly things and somehow think you're gonna get closer to
Jesus this? Hey, can I just give you this beautiful
imagery coming down out of heaven, out of Zechariah four,
where you have this beautiful, wondrous, powerful, riveting imagery where
we see a golden lap stand with a bowl at
the top, seven lights attached to the bowl of golden liquid,

(22:34):
and from the golden liquid. We have these two olive
branches that pour out over the gold or pour out
the golden oil, and the two olive trees on the
right and the left of the lap stand. And we're
told in Zechariah four or fourteen they represent the two Witnesses.
And according to William Henderson in his book More Than Conquers,
the two witnesses represent those who bear testimony of the Gospel,

(22:55):
its ministers and missionaries. As the Lord sends us out
two by two generation to generation, and as signified in
the Two Witnesses, you and I will be empowered to
see things, do things, fill things we've never seen, done
and felt before. And the question is, according to Zechariah
four to six, how not by might nor by power,

(23:16):
but by my spirit, says the Lord of Armies. I
don't know why we think we're saved by grace through faith,
but sanctification is something that we do. It's a result
of living in close proximity to Jesus. If you want
to allow the Spirit to accomplish his work in you,

(23:36):
don't try harder hang with Jesus. And here's what happens.
If you're around Jesus all the time. Those desires go
because you can't hang out with a master. They'll actually
turn your stomach because you're a biden over here. Father,
forgive me for the length of sermon. Anything I've said
that's consistent with your word. I pray that we go

(23:58):
deep into the heart. Anything I've said that is not
that would fall by the wayside and be forgotten. I
pray that as we open this chapter, that all of
us would realize the Spirit of God is in us.
That we're able to do and to see and to
feel things we've never done, felt, seen before. And if
we will abide in you, the fruits of the spirit
become a reality. And Christ's name, everybody said. Amen.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
You've been listening to Today with Jeff Fines. Next time
we'll bring you a new message from pastor Jeff. You
can listen to more messages like this. Just search for
Today with Jeff Findes wherever you get your podcasts. You
met me.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
With Everything

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Today, Today, Today, Today with Jeff Fines