361: Podcast Showcase - Essential Bible Studies

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Hey everyone, this is Jason Hensley. This week we are listening to a Christadelphian podcast called Essential Bible Studies, and a specific episode is The Mind of the Spirit. Now, one of the things that I love about this podcast is that it’s really a discussion. So there’s numerous guests and you get to really just listen in on this Bible discussion. It’s almost like you’re having a really good, exciting Bible conversation.

2. 0:30

   So I think that you’re going to enjoy that about it. In addition to that, the guest interviewed in this one is brother Ben Brinkerhoff. They actually went to Sunday school together. So when I heard that he was a guest on this episode, I was pretty excited about that. But in addition to that, I really love the way that this discussion moves through experience and scripture at the same time. I think sometimes that’s a really difficult line to really hit.

3. 1:02

   Sometimes we lean too far on experience. Other times we are only scripture and it can be really hard to figure out how does how does this apply or how does this mean something to me. And I really loved how this episode weaved it all in, weaved it all together, and I felt like really created this whole with a a depth of meaning and significance for really any anybody who’s listening to it.

4. 1:33

   So. With that said, this is the mind of the Spirit discussing what is the Spirit and what does it mean to have the mind of the Spirit, focusing specifically on Romans chapter 8 and with a little sprinkling in of the Gospel of John. So I think you’ll enjoy it. This is the Mind of the Spirit, essential Bible studies for the Tim Young is the podcaster, and the guest is Brother Ben Brinkerhoff. For to set the mind on the flesh is. Death.

5. 2:21

   But to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. That’s from Romans chapter 8. Verse 6 This is the. Essential Bible Studies Podcast. My name is Tim Young and I’m here with Ben Brinkerhoff, an old friend that I haven’t seen or talked to in, I’m figuring, 20 years. Where does the time go? But now, with the magic of technology, we can bridge the distance and talk again.

6. 2:54

   I blame it on Ben. He moved to New Zealand and, well, I moved to Canada. But way back when we were a lot younger, we both lived in the Golden State of California. Right men. That’s right, Tim, back in those days, I looked up to you. But it’s nice 20 years later, like, oh, why? Actually, we’re not in different parts of life as much as we were then.

7. 3:15

   Yeah, it’s great to be reunited again. I can’t help but think by the Providence of God, as I was preparing this season with the theme of the Spirit, I really wanted to do an episode on what it means to have the mind of the Spirit and how we can have the Spirit dwelling in US.

8. 3:31

   What does that mean? OK. I felt Romans chapter 8 was the perfect passage to talk about it, but I didn’t really have anybody to talk about it with. Then out of the blue, I discovered these classes on Romans given by an old familiar friend. So I listened and I just thought they were excellent.

9. 3:51

   I had to find you again and talk to you about setting the mind on the things of the Spirit. So here we are, and I’m so happy to have you on the podcast. Can you tell us how you got into this study and how it changed your life? Because it really did change your life, right?

10. 4:09

    It did. I found this study when I was in a lot of emotional distress. I was doing mission work in the Persian Gulf. Wow, that sounds like it’s a very scary place to do mission work. But I didn’t find it very scary at all. Working with people that are brought into the Persian Gulf to do labour jobs, people from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Philippines and other places and they brought into that country and they have a real thirst for God.

11. 4:48

    Some of them come over as Christians and you could absolutely speak to them and they had a real desire to hear about the word of God. But the work was incredibly challenging and we ran into many various conflicts. One of the most important was I had about $48,000 stolen from us. We were moved out of our house and we lived in a place which wasn’t up to the specifications of where we had been before. And we couldn’t cook hot food.

12. 5:21

    That’s not that you can’t cook hot food in Qatar. Certainly you can’t. It’s just the place we were at. We couldn’t. The gas wasn’t hooked up, wasn’t working, problems with the electrics, and my wife was pregnant and she didn’t feel like she was getting the medical care that she needed because she was a type 1 diabetic.

13. 5:38

    So I had the concern of getting her the appropriate medical care for her pregnancy. This is your first child. This is our first child. So everywhere I looked, I was under pressure and cess and I thought maybe because I was doing mission work that God owed me a couple a couple breaks maybe, right. And it’s not that the mission work itself wasn’t being successful because we were doing wonderful things there and that was rewarding itself.

14. 6:10

    But I, you know, when looking at the number of challenges that we are facing, I felt distress and I didn’t know where to turn. Alyssa wasn’t doing very well and I, I felt like every moment I was trying to solve a problem and some of the problems I couldn’t solve. And so as you do, you know, I turned to the scripture and it was turned the scripture in a sort of a, a beautiful way. Because so much when you’re on mission work, what you’re doing is you’re preparing Bible classes for other people to hear classes on the 1st principles of the faith and classes on the essential facts of the faith so that people can learn those things.

15. 6:56

    And what you end up finding is you’re not often doing Bible study for yourself to strengthen yourself. And so I remember I turned open to Romans and I did kind of didn’t know where to go. Oh, interesting. Right. Just fell open that it. Kind of did those pages fell open and I read these verses that you read as a starter to this podcast to set thy mind on the things of the Spirit as opposed to setting your mind on the things of the flesh. And one was being life and one was death. And the next verse really struck me there. Romans 8, verse 7.

16. 7:36

    For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. In the King James Version, it says enmity with God going on. It says it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed it cannot. I remember Tim looking at that and having this huge sense of relief. And the sense of relief was there was something in me, something that was rebellious, something that was hostile to God, and that thing within me was absolutely not going to be converted. It was enmity.

17. 8:28

    It would not be subject to God’s law. It cannot be subject to God’s law. And so if I’m sitting here and I’m having difficult thoughts, rebellious thoughts, anger and hostility, if I feel like I don’t want to do the work, well, why was I promised any different? Is there not something within me that is hostile and at enmity with God?

18. 9:03

    And so the issue was not whether or not I had good or bad feelings. You see, that’s I think that is a false course. It’s a red herring that I should pursue a path towards good feelings or that somehow the truth was about having good feelings. Like a warm fuzzy. Feeling. Yeah. It’s elusive.

19. 9:29

    Or maybe some sort of ecstatic experience or something like that? Absolutely, that I should be having something along those lines. And instead what I came to realize that the work of the Spirit within me was in setting my mind, setting my mind on the things of the spirit rather than the things of the flesh.

20. 9:55

    Now the mind is the conscious thoughts and it has to be something that is set able. It must be able to be set. It must be changeable. It must be something I can maneuver from one place to another. And so in that respect, it has to be different than the enmity that cannot be converted. There’s something within me that can’t be converted. I don’t know that I can set that thing, but what I can do is I can set my mind on the Spirit, or alternatively, if I’m not careful about it, I can set my mind on the things of the flesh. And so in that sort of crisis place in missionary work, I understood that I just need to make a choice, The choices set my mind on things of the Spirit, no matter how it felt. And that rang true, right?

21. 10:54

    Yeah. Because how could the prophets and the apostles and disciples who faced so many challenges and so much distress, how could they do that? Because it felt good. You know, feelings themselves are much more likely to be tied to the flesh, which produces feelings, than it is to be tied to. The yeah, the natural instinctive reactions.

22. 11:23

    We have those feelings, yeah. So I needed to do what was right, no matter how it felt to set my mind on the things of the Spirit. And there’s actual piece of that because rather than trying to hit your head against the brick wall that is trying to convert the flesh, right? Which is pretty hard, right? It’s like, I don’t have to convert that. You know, what I’m going to do in this instance is I’m going to do the right thing and we’re going to see where the feelings go, right?

23. 11:58

    We’re going to see what the flesh does. That is not my business. That’s God’s business. I think this is interesting that you had several years under your belt of Bible study and reading and to the point where you’re dedicated enough to go across the planet to preach and still you needed to learn this. And it’s right there in the Scripture, right? But you couldn’t learn it to the experienced it and put it with the word right.

24. 12:26

    And it’s some way that the Spirit works because it illuminates our carnal mind. It emphasizes this war that’s within us, right? So if we don’t have that war, I think there’s a problem. It means we’ve already lost to the flesh, or we’re just automatically by default, setting our mind on the things of the flesh.

25. 12:50

    So there has to be that battle there. And we’ve talked about on the podcast about recognizing sin in our lives and how awful it is, how dangerous it is. Like Paul says at the end of Chapter 7, he says, O wretched man that I am is actually coming to that point and realizing that we’re all wretched, that we all have this carnal mind, this base that’s inside of us. There’s nobody free from this.

26. 13:16

    We all sin. We all succumb to this. But I love what you’re saying there about you have to set your mind that this is a choice in our life to follow after the things that make for life and peace rather than death. Yeah, I think there in Romans chapter 8, what Paul’s doing is he’s elaborating on what he said in verse 4, because what he has said in verse 1 to 4 is that there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Yeah, that’s verse one.

27. 13:45

    And then he gets to verse four. He says in verse 4 in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in US who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. That’s a big statement because he’s saying there’s no condemnation, which of course I love to hear.

28. 14:05

    Because once you get brought to the point where you understand that you’re wretched and that’s a big point to get to, you understand that within me is something that desires to sin and that it is wretched and it is in me and I can’t get rid of it. And you think to yourself, there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

29. 14:25

    You think absolutely, these are the words I need to hear. I need to hear that even though I have this body of sin that I have a hope that I can grab onto that is bigger than my problems. But then he says in verse four, he qualifies. Who can access this? And the qualification is about the word who at the universe, for he’s in the RSV version who walk not according to the flesh, according to spirit.

30. 15:00

    And I think, oh, wait a minute, I was just given this wonderful thing called no condemnation. And now I’m told that it’s accessible for those who walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. And now I’m thinking, oh, wow, wait a minute, right, That’s my problem. My problem is I’m fleshly. So if I have to walk over in the spirit to access this, no condemnation, am I not back in the same problem I was before? I think Paul understands the tension of that. Oh, absolutely.

31. 15:36

    And so Paul understands as well, because he’s established in Chapter 7 that the desire to do wicked things is inevitable. So now he has to relieve the tension of the moment. How do we walk according to the Spirit? How do I do that? Because I definitely want no condemnation, but walking according to the Spirit that I’m struggling with. What does that mean?

32. 16:04

    And so Paul’s going to say that believers have a choice. They don’t have a choice whether or not they have a desire to sin because that desire to sin is encoded within us and it’s enmity with God. You don’t have a choice. You can’t make that go away. It didn’t go away for Paul.

33. 16:25

    It didn’t go away for Peter. And of course it was in the Lord Jesus Christ and he took it to the cross and you destroyed it. You destroyed that body of sin that he had. So we don’t get to get rid of it, right? So what we have to do is we have to set our minds on the things of the Spirit and that way we can make this choice one choice at a time to do that. But of course, the one of the things that that then brings up and the question that brings up is, well, what? What’s the spirit set?

34. 17:05

    My mind up, that’s the question I was going to ask is, yeah, we talked about that. We talked about how to do this. Well, I think first of all, we have to define what is the spirit. Now I’ve taken a shot at this in in past podcasts, but I’d I’d like to hear your take on this.

35. 17:19

    OK, I’m not saying that I have any better take than you do, Tim. In fact, I probably default to you. But I think if you look at the word spirit, it’s used in such a wide variety of contexts. Absolutely. And you think to yourself, what is the thread of similarity between these contexts?

36. 17:37

    And you’ve probably mentioned some of these on previous episodes, Like Breath and Like Winds and like life itself. And angels are called spirits and God’s power is called a spirit. OK, so what’s the thread here? I remember kind of trying to think about this and noticing in the distance a tree and the tree was moving.

37. 18:04

    And the The funny thing about seeing a tree move is you and I both into, and everyone listening to this knows that what was making the tree move was wind. But here’s The funny thing about wind is you can’t see it. You can’t see the wind. So wait a minute, this tree is moving. So I can see the effect.

38. 18:24

    I can see what happened. I just can’t see the ’cause I can’t see the agent of the tree moving. I can’t see wind. Maybe in extreme cases I can. But you know, just as we just look it out the window, we see the tree just swaying back and forth. You can’t see it with your eyes. It’s just clear.

39. 18:44

    But I see the effect. And so when something has power but it cannot be seen, the Bible terms that spirit. So if you see someone who’s alive and someone is dead, it’s obviously the alive person is very similar to the dead person. They have all the same parts, head, heart, hands, you know, intestines, all the same, except the difference is the alive person’s breathing. And so the ancients, they call breath spirit because that’s the thing that is sustaining that person’s life. So my thoughts, it’s clear that I have them and it’s clear that they’re very powerful, but I can’t see my thoughts. And so in some context, I’m going to call my thoughts spirit.

40. 19:38

    It has power, but I can’t see it. Angels, I can see the effect of angels. I look back in my life and I cannot notice that in areas that there might have been, I think there was angelic intervention, but I can’t see the angels. So the angels are called spirits, ministering spirits. I can see the effect.

41. 19:59

    I can’t see the cause. And in all these instances where I can see the effect and not see the ’cause I’m going to call those things spirit. And where they could be wind, it could be breath, it could be an Angel, it could be thoughts. But I’m going to give you even a more subtle example and that is words. See everyone that’s listening to this podcast right now See there’s Sound Vibrations.

42. 20:23

    That is moving through the air, that’s moving from their device into their ears. Now they can’t see that. You can’t see the sound vibrations and the air vibrating and moving. Yet words have huge power, don’t they? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I’ll tell you how powerful words are, Tim. I mean, I fell in love with my wife because of words, because of our conversations. She was living in New Zealand.

43. 20:58

    I was living in the United States. I didn’t even know what she looked. Like she cast her spell on you it sounds like. Yeah, and we had these conversations and you’d share things and it’s just words. And suddenly something is happening inside my heart, right? That is incredibly powerful. And I haven’t even seen her.

44. 21:20

    It’s just words and suddenly I’m feeling like I’m in love. Now don’t tell me that that’s not power, but I never could see it, right? And the power behind it, Ben, is that it’s actually 2 minds that are connecting. I mean, you talk about it going through the airwaves, but you’re actually formulating these thoughts in your mind.

45. 21:44

    You’re vocalizing them with your tongue. It goes out through the sound waves into the ears of somebody else and it gets in their brain, they interpret it and it’s an influence on somebody else, whether for good or for bad. So that’s the spirit. So and I think it just to enlarge that too, like in our world, in our age, there’s a spirit of the age. We have influences in society.

46. 22:12

    We’ve moved in these currents of words and thoughts that, you know, social media has just exploded and those kind of things, but it has an influence. It’s a current which moves something. Absolutely. Yeah, the. Base of it is words like you said, and that’s to us, that’s the scriptures, that’s the word of God, right with the things that we are are reading right here in the Bible. They are spirit, their power, their words, but they’re just not letters on a page.

47. 22:42

    Maybe to some of their letters on a page? Yes. But you know they stopping letters on a page at a certain point and the point is when you believe them, you can’t actually point. Even if you were under the most advanced of MRI machines, I wouldn’t be able to take a believer in a non believer and put them under MRI machine and point to that’s the belief spot, right? I wouldn’t put it past scientists to try to do that. Maybe.

48. 23:09

    Right. You’re absolutely right, yeah. But here the those invisible words have entered into my mind and they have absolutely changed my life. My life is completely different because I believe them and they have power to translate me from death to life like I was dead. And then I got access to some words and I believe those words and I acted on those words. And because of the words written down spoken by men thousands of years ago, because I believed them and I acted on that belief. I can’t point to the place, but God says my name’s now in the book of life.

49. 24:05

    So words have created belief, and belief has moved someone from death to life. That’s power, and that’s why the Word is spirit. Yeah, I can see what you’re getting at. And I think it’s very helpful because what Paul is talking about here about setting our mind on the Spirit, I think a lot of people kind of read that and they just assume, well, is this just something that comes out of the blue? Is this just some sort of thought that pops into my mind that I have the Spirit like we were talking about before? Is it some sort of ecstatic experience that boom, all of a sudden I know what to do those kind of things, right? But what you’re saying is that this is really developed off of familiarity with the word of God. You know, the Word of God is talked about as a seed, right? You know, there’s a parable.

50. 25:05

    This sower goes out to sow a seed. Paul in First Corinthians chapter 3, he says when he preached he planted and he said this other brother in Christ, Apollo’s watered. But then he said God gave the increase to me. It’s almost like the Word and the Spirit are connected in that way that the word to the seed and that there is something inside of us that makes this word grow beyond what’s just a letter on a page that we have the spirit now to take this and say, OK, here’s the spirit of what this is saying. Otherwise we’d just have a big rule book, you know, trying to make every rule for every situation in our life. But that’s not possible, right?

51. 25:48

    So we have to have something that’s spiritual that helps us to form our thoughts to say, OK, I’m dealing with this challenge right now in my life. And when I read the scriptures, what’s the spirit of what the scriptures is, is trying to guide me in my life. So do you have other ideas about like, is Paul here talking about the Spirit in that way that it’s really the word? I absolutely think that that is the sense in which Paul is getting at.

52. 26:18

    This is sense in which you have believed and so you have set your mind on the things of that belief. Now you know, it says in Isaiah that God dwells in a high and a holy place and also with Him that as of a contrite and a humble spirit. OK. And I think all of us have the experience of noticing someone who is humble and contrite because of the effect of the Word of God on them. Yes.

53. 26:52

    And as a result of that, they make choices and speak in such a way that the word has had such an influence on them that they’re not even speaking themselves. It’s like when they speak, you hear God’s wisdom through their experience and you think to yourself, God’s dwelling in that person. Now, how is God dwelling in that person? God’s dwelling in that person?

54. 27:18

    Because what they say isn’t really their words. It’s not the thoughts that come from their flesh. It’s was the thoughts that came to them from the outside in that have changed them because they believed them and they acted on them. And so they’re different because something came from the outside in. And so now God dwells in that person through his Word.

55. 27:45

    And absolutely the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ has to dwell within us. And Paul’s going to say that here in Romans. He’s going to say if the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ isn’t in you, you don’t have any life. And that is 100% true. Not only did the Holy Spirit raise Jesus from the dead, and if the Holy Spirit doesn’t raise us from the dead, we have no life.

56. 28:08

    So the Holy Spirit better do that work. But the Holy Spirit is going to do that work because we believe, and the Spirit that was in the Lord Jesus Christ, that Spirit that believed, if that Spirit is absent within us, then all we have is flesh and then all we have is death.

57. 28:29

    And so Christ better dwell within us through His Spirit, just like God said, He dwells in a person that is of a lowly and a contrite heart. And of course, as believers on a Sunday, we partake of the bread and the wine, don’t we? And it’s not that we believe that that is literally the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, but in symbol. It is those things.

58. 28:59

    And you take them in you, and they have to be in you, and they have to dwell in you beyond a physical sense, beyond the sense of the flesh. They have to dwell within you in the sense of the Spirit. And the best example of this I think is in John 6 where. I was just thinking the same thing. You want to turn over to John 6 because I think it’s a good example of these principles.

59. 29:25

    You’re in John 6 and says they’re in verse 54. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. Leaves my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I abide in him. And now that’s very similar language, by the way, to what we see in Romans.

60. 29:50

    Which mentions a dwelling. Yeah, dwelling or in the RSV abiding. So same word there, right? So it’s the same idea of like, if you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you abide in me. And of course you do as a believer on a Sunday, you eat that bread and you drink that wine and you do it in symbol. So this is very similar language. Why I want Christ to abide in me. How do I do that?

61. 30:17

    The record’s going to say that when several of the disciples heard this, they were offended because it was a hard saying and they murmured amongst themselves and Jesus says, do you take offence at this? And I think that this is an interesting concept here because I just want to focus for a moment on that word offence because here’s the interesting thing is I want to just ask the question.

62. 30:49

    These words of the Lord Jesus Christ were true and they were life. But how did they feel? Well, I’ll tell you how they felt. They caused offence. They caused offence. See the the words of the Lord Jesus Christ don’t always feel good tooth. Hey, in this instance they caused offence. It’s the trouble of focusing on feelings. How do you think it would have been for the 12 when they saw all these disciples scatter?

63. 31:21

    You see, Because what feels good, I tell you, you know what feels good? What feels good is someone giving you bread they pull out of a basket that you didn’t have to. Work free food. You know that feels good. Like Genesis 319 says, by the sweat of your face, you’re going to create bread, right?

64. 31:39

    And here Jesus is pulling bread out of a basket or like no sweat of my face on that one. That feels great. Give me this bread. I want this bread. Give me this bread. Always. See, that feels good. And that is not what the Lord Jesus Christ was going to give them. He was going to give them something so much better.

65. 31:57

    Well. When you talk about flesh and blood, you’re talking about crucifixion, you’re talking about suffering. That’s what he’s going to give them, right? Yeah. Did that feel good, that. Doesn’t feel good, yeah, but that’s the path they take up our cross, right? Yeah, exactly. So what is it within us that allows us to do what doesn’t feel good?

66. 32:16

    What is it within us that allows us to choose to do the right thing, the godly thing, even when it feels bad? That’s spirit, that’s power. There’s something bigger than our flesh. There’s something that’s within us. Allow us to do what’s right, even when doing what’s right feels bad.

67. 32:45

    And that thing has to have power. And so actually in in relation to feelings, having the spirit is not only not worried about how you feel, it’s sometimes doing what doesn’t feel good in reality. And there’s got to be a power within you that allows you to do what doesn’t feel good, but is what your Lord is asking of you.

68. 33:12

    And if you set your mind on things of the flesh and you want the free meal, right, then you’re going to murmur and you’re going to walk away. And what’s interesting is when Jesus says, Hey, do you take offense of me? Right? He says this in verse 62 of John 6. Then what if you see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?

69. 33:34

    It is the Spirit that gives life. The flesh is of no avail. When Jesus was talking about His body in his blood, they’re offended because they didn’t want to literally eat his body in the blood. But he’s like, no, no, no, you’ve missed it. See, it’s the Spirit. It’s the Spirit that gives life.

70. 33:54

    You have to have belief in those things. If you don’t have belief in those things right, If you don’t take them inside and ingest them so that I dwell in your heart and within you to create the conditions in which you do what is right and good in God’s eyes, even when it’s hard, if that doesn’t live within you, then you have no life within you.

71. 34:20

    It’s the Spirit that gives light. The flesh is of no avail. The words that I’ve spoken to you are Spirit and life. I couldn’t say it more clearly, Tim, could it? The words I’ve spoken to you are spirit and life. And of course, they leave. They don’t want this because it doesn’t feel good.

72. 34:43

    Many of the disciples abandoned him and so it says in verse 66. After this, many disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. And Jesus said to the 12 do you also wish to go away? And Simon Peter answered and said, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. So Peter got it right.

73. 35:08

    So what allowed Peter to stay when everyone else left is he had belief. Yeah, Yeah, he did. He had the words of eternal life, and as believers, we take the symbols of the bread and the wine and we take them within us. And at the end of that process, the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fact that he was poured out for his brother and sisters, He was poured out for us.

74. 35:35

    If we don’t have a spirit in which we’re willing to live as resurrected believers and be poured out for other believers and do difficult things because this spirit compels us to do difficult things because we believe, then we’ve just eaten bread and dragon wine. It’s just physical. It’s just flesh. Yeah, well, you brought up verse 63 there. Jesus says the Spirit gives life, the flesh is no help at all.

75. 36:05

    The words that I’ve spoken to you are spirit in life. I just like to go back to Romans chapter 8 and just read verses 9 through 11 because it almost seems like Paul is picking up on these words. Absolutely. And when you read these two back-to-back, Paul is talking about how the Spirit is life. But we see how Jesus says it’s the words that he’s saying. This is what Paul says in Romans 8 verses 9 through 11. Well, let me start at verse 8.

76. 36:33

    Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

77. 37:22

    There’s so much in there, but I love this part in verse 11 where he puts a lot of words to where he could have simply said the Spirit of God. He says the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. It’s a resurrection power, right? The Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, literally.

78. 37:45

    But that’s what Jesus is calling us to do is to be resurrected through baptism and through the renewing and the changing the Spirit of our minds to be created in his image and his likeness, right? So I just love how he draws that out and puts that echo there. But he also mentions 3 times he mentions this aspect of it dwelling in you.

79. 38:09

    But Paul here does in this verse that the Spirit of God, which he says is also the Spirit of Christ, has to be dwelling in us. So we have to understand that this is not a mystery. We know how it happens. It’s by setting our minds on the things of the Spirit, which is the words of Christ. We are taught that, we learn that we incorporate, that we believe.

80. 38:33

    Like you’ve said, oh, that’s so important. And that’s really to me, is how the Spirit is supposed to guide our life. Well, I think that sometimes the word spirit can be a difficult concept to understand because the word is used so broadly. Yeah, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ was a spirit within him that absolutely believed in the things that God had promised and had total dedication within himself to do God’s will. And that spirit in some measure must be within us. And it is in us when we read what Jesus has done and we believe, and then as a result of that belief, we start to make difficult choices that don’t feel good to our flesh, but which are honoring to God.

81. 39:30

    We set our mind on the things of the Spirit, and that spirit must be within us, because you can’t set your mind on something you don’t have. You don’t ask people to read the Bible just to torture them. The idea is to get these ideas into their mind so that they can set their mind on it.

82. 39:59

    Because if they don’t have these ideas in their mind. Then the default will always be satisfy the cravings of my body. So if a listener is staying there right now and they’re making choices that are not in the interest of satisfying the cravings of their body, but are allowing them to do what God’s will is because of their belief, then that is the result of steady your mind on the things of the Spirit.

83. 40:32

    And that can only occur because the Spirit of Christ dwells within you because of what you’ve heard and Christ saying, my words are spirit and my words are life. And it changes you. And you can have spiritual experiences in which because of the word, the Spirit in my life, things that I used to struggle with and really strain against, now they don’t tempt me as much as they did before because God’s relieved me of that. Because of following the things of the Spirit. Paul says things that he used to treasure, he now considers done right.

84. 41:16

    Well, there’s obviously a change, you know, something that used to really tempt him and things that he wanted. And now he looks at those things and they’re not valuable to him anymore. And he’s changed, and that happens, right? But that happens because you set your mind on things of the Spirit. And I think what Paul’s even doing in verses 9 to 11, he’s saying, because you might think to yourself, set your mind on the things of the Spirit. That’s so hard.

85. 41:40

    How do I do that? And I think the overall emphasis is that the spirit is greater than the flesh, the spirits overcome the flesh, and that what’s with you and what’s working for you and what’s trying to help you in this endeavour is greater than what’s working against you. And I know that because it resurrected a man from the dead.

86. 42:03

    And the flesh can’t do that. The flesh can’t do that. So whatever the spirit is, it’s got to be greater than the flesh because it can do the things the flesh can’t do. And we’re meant to feel comfort as a result of what Paul’s saying here, not be confused, be comforted. Right. Not feel defeated, not let our flesh lie to us. And you feel like we’re a fraud or something like that, right? Because we’re to expect this battle. But like you’re saying, when we let that word, when we let that spirit influence us and overtake us, what does it do to the carnal mind?

87. 42:38

    It starts putting it to death. That’s right. And you have these battles where it’s being put to death. And of course you lose some battles, but the important thing is there that God and Christ are there helping us to win the war. Right. Absolutely. Well, what else is there to say? A lot.

88. 42:56

    I think we just touched the tip of the iceberg here, especially in Romans chapter 8. He goes on to talk about the Spirit some more, but I think this is a just a really good starting point when we talk about essential Bible studies, this is one of them, right? This is not the only place that Paul talks about the Spirit, but this is a really key passage and I’m so glad that God touched your life with it.

89. 43:20

    He’s touched my life with this passage as well. But as we’ve been saying, it’s something learned over time, right? It’s something that’s gradual, like the growth of a plant, like we were talking about before, from a seed, it sprouts up pretty quickly. But as it’s nourished and continues to grow, it’s a slow process before it actually bears fruit, the fruit of the Spirit.

90. 43:42

    I always like to say God does the hard work like, you know, planting, watering, ho hum, bringing a flowering plant from a seed this small, that’s hard. God does the hard work, right? Not us. And I think the Spirit the same. We read, we pray, we try and you think where’s the change going to come? You say, well, give God time.

91. 44:05

    God’s going to do the hard work. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. He’ll grow it within you. Yeah, it’s just amazing. And a lot of times, yeah, you just have to stand back and just wonder and be amazed at everything that God does. All right, Ben. Well, thank you very much for joining me. I know you’re very a busy man.

92. 44:21

    I really appreciate it. And I think this is a great session that we’ve had. I’d like to do it again sometime. Yeah. Sure. Thank you, Tim. It’s really wonderful connect and thank you for inviting me as a guest. I really appreciate it. All right. Thanks, Ben. Take care. This marks the 70th episode of the Essential Bible Studies podcast.

93. 44:50

    That means if you’re new to the podcast, there’s a. Lot of great listening for. You in our back catalog 70 podcasts are a lot, but there’s so much more fascinating topics to come. Join us next week when Jay Mayock is back to talk with me about the relationship between God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit, popularly known as the Trinity. We’re going to traverse some of the history of that term and study some of the verses that talk about the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

94. 45:24

    As always, look out for us on Facebook, Instagram or X and share our posts on your own timeline or story so others can discover it as well. Yes, you plant all water and God will give the increase. Make sure to visit our website at www.essentialbiblestudies.org and use the contact form to send us a question. You can request one of our free media kits or get the link to join our online Bible study group. The Essential Bible Studies podcast is sponsored by the book Rd.

95. 46:04

    Christadelphian Ecclesia in beautiful Ancaster ON Canada. Until we meet again, dear friends, I pray to God that you may grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior of Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.