Sunday School | Ezekiel 36-37 - The Old Testament Refers to the New Covenant (Holy Spirit)

I hope you guys are doing well. We are continuing our series. We just started a couple weeks ago. We moved out of theology proper and Christology and into pneumatology. We're studying the doctrine of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. And we've said a couple of times in this class that one of the most important passages about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is from Ezekiel 36. Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31 and then also Deuteronomy 30 are the primary passages in the old covenant that talk about the new covenant. And we're going to look just at Ezekiel 36 again this morning and I want to show you this and I want you to notice that what's happening in Ezekiel 36 is that we're going to see that the Holy Spirit living in the people of God is the distinctive marker of the new covenant.

We tend to think that the new covenant is about the time that Jesus comes and that's not an unreasonable thing to conclude. But it is striking that when the Old Testament anticipates the new covenant and uses language of new covenant, it's not talking about the second person of the Trinity. It's talking about the third which might give us a little bit of pause.

The Promise of God's Spirit in Ezekiel 36

Here's what it says. This is Ezekiel 36:24:

For I will take you out of the nations. I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your land.

This is written during basically the Babylonian exile and when people of Judah were scattered and drawn away.

I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I'll cleanse you from all your impurities, from all your idols. I'll give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And then here's really the climactic moment:

I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

That claim that what's going to be so great, what's going to be so remarkable in the new covenant is that God will put his spirit in us and he will move us to follow his decrees and laws. Now the fact that that's the central claim, you might be like how do you know that's the most important thing he says? Well because of what he says next.

Ezekiel 36 is followed by Ezekiel 37 and Ezekiel 37 is relatively well known because it's the kind of thing you might teach your kids in a Sunday school because it's so picturesque. But it's possible that you'd be familiar with the flannel graph version of Ezekiel 37 but not understand the import of what he's saying. So right after he says:

I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees. Be careful to keep my laws.

This is what happens next. In chapter 37 it says:

The hand of the Lord was upon me and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and He sent me in the middle of the valley and it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry and He asked me, son of man, can these bones live? And I said, Sovereign Lord, you alone know.

And then He said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them:

Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you and you will come to life. I'll attach tendons to you, make flesh come upon you, cover you with skin, I'll put my breath in you and you will come to life and then you will know that I am the Lord.

So we've heard, you may be familiar with the story like this. It appears to be a resurrection story. It's life out of death and it would be reasonable if you assumed that this is saying something about at the end of time when Jesus comes back and you're going to raise everybody from the dead. That's not what we're talking about, okay? Even though the image, the metaphor is resurrection, this is not a prediction of the return of Christ and our resurrection, it's a prediction of something else. And the point of it is: I'll make breath enter you. He says it twice, I'll make breath enter you. The word for breath, by the way, is the same word as spirit.

And so look what happens in verse 7:

So I prophesied as I commanded and as I was prophesying there was a noise, a rattling sound and the bones came together, bone to bone and I looked in tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them. But there was no breath in them.

What you're supposed to be watching for in this story is you've got a bunch of dead bodies, a bunch of—not even bodies, they're just bones. And we move from bones to dead bodies and who cares about that? What he's trying to do is see these bones come back to life. And instead we've made corpses and he's disappointed, which is why he says:

But there was no breath in them.

It's meant to be this pause in the action that you're like, "Where's the good stuff? Where's the thing that matters?"

Where's the only thing that counts is life and breath? And so then in verse 9, he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy son of man and say to it." And again, every time you see the word breath, it's the word spirit—it's Ruach.

This is what the sovereign Lord says: "Come from the four winds, O breath and breathe into these slain that they may live." — Ezekiel 37:9

And so I prophesied as he commanded me. And breath entered them, they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

And then in case we miss it, he explains what this whole thing was about.

Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, "Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone. We are cut off." Therefore, prophesy and say to them, "This is what the sovereign Lord says: 'Oh my people, I'm going to open your graves and bring you up from them. I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from them.'" — Ezekiel 37:11-13

And here it is, verse 14:

I will put my spirit in you and you will live. And I will settle you in your own land. And then you'll know that I, the Lord, have spoken and have done it. — Ezekiel 37:14

There is a connection—absolutely—between verse 36, this promise, this prediction that the time is coming when I will put my spirit in you and I will move you to follow my decrees and laws, and chapter 37, which is a picture of it happening. But it's a picture with a pause in which it doesn't happen, so that we'll be like, "Where's the breath? Where's the spirit?" And then when it finally comes, there's a sense of, okay, it lasts. Yes, we've finally gotten what we've been offered. Makes sense?

The New Indwelling of the Spirit

Okay, all of that is to say, this whole passage—one of the most important passages in the Old Testament about the Holy Spirit—it was anticipating that something would change. If we were alive in this time, I don't think we would have fully understood it. But something will happen where the God who indwells all space, the God who is omnipresent, but in some particular way lived in a box—God's always been omnipresent, but for a season of time, he lived in the ark of the covenant, which people traveled around. That same God who can be simultaneously everywhere but then particularly somewhere—the time was coming when he would be everywhere but particularly inside his people. This would be new.

You have lived your whole life in a world in which the Spirit of God indwells his people. But that's because you haven't been alive for very long. If you were born anytime prior to the coming of Christ, that was complete everything—it didn't work that way. When Jesus came, and in particular, when he left, this got activated. Ezekiel 36 came true. Ezekiel 37 came true. And from that moment on, every Christian, every follower of him, has been not only born of him but indwelt by him. Does this make sense? This is a big, big, big, big, big deal.

Now, there's a lot more you've got to say about that, but step one: this is a change of state. This transforms everything. The Spirit of God alive in every single person who is following him.

If you are born again, if you are hidden in Christ, if you are in him, he is in you. No exceptions. Romans 8 is going to say this: If the Spirit of Christ is in you, Ezekiel 36 has come to pass. However, not everybody is experiencing the full implementation of that. I'm going to tell you more about that in one second.

Gill, is it something we need to talk about right now? Is it relevant to this moment? Okay, go for it. Would this have scared the Jews at that time, the promise of that? Because we know in the gospel, whenever Jesus came, that anyone—like a Gentile—is the gift of salvation. Would this have scared them in a way that we are losing our standing?

I don't think so. Gill's question is: would this have been frightening and intimidating to the Jews at the time to know that God was going to indwell them? Because it's totally changing the way that God interacts with their world. Would they have read this and thought, "We're doing something totally wrong. He's changing these things"?

Okay, so Gill's question is, would this have been frightening—the fact that the rules of the game are changing? Would that have been intimidating? The way that you're framing that may be—if they realized, by the way, it's pretty insulting, right? If you realize that what Ezekiel is telling them, what God is telling them through Ezekiel, is "I'm going to put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws"—what's the underlying reality that would cause him to do that? They're not, right? It's essentially saying, "Okay, sock puppets, you're no good at this. So I'm just going to indwell you and I'm going to move your lips, right?" That's basically what he's saying.

And so, if they recognized that this is incredibly humiliating—that the only way you're going to become the obedient person is if I'm living in you and moving your lips—I don't know if it's frightening or insulting, but it's accurate, whatever it is.

Kelly: I think it also has to be terrifying, too, because prior to this, he lived in the holy of holies, which could only be accessible. The strictness of regulations—I think it would be terrifying.

Well, and if you sense not just that he's coming, but that he is the Holy Spirit and that you could expect that might drive out the unholy parts of you. I mean, certainly whenever God shows up anytime in the Scriptures and people see him face to face, they hit the ground. Just uniformly, right? You just hit the ground.

So they may have anticipated that, which is a little bit interesting because when Jesus describes this exact thing—what Jesus talks about in Ezekiel 36—in what we've been referring to as the Upper Room discourse in John 14 to 17, in that space, it's great comfort. It's great consolation. In fact, it is the consolation for Jesus' departure. He's like, "If I don't leave, then he won't come, and so it's for your good that I go away, because if I go away, then he will come."

So this man is a comfort and consolation, but if you're paying attention, yes, it's a little bit intimidating, I would think, right?

Two Kinds of People

Okay, so now here's what happens though. Very clear that there was a time where the people of God did not have the Spirit of God living in them. He was everywhere, but he wasn't particularly in here. And then there's this change of state that Jesus describes. But then Paul talks about it. Listen to how Paul talks about it. This is going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. I think this passage is really important if we're going to understand what it's like for us in this moment to live here.

What Paul is going to say in 1 Corinthians chapter 2—it's a big long argument, but we'll pick it up in verse 14—is that there are two kinds of people in the world.

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. — 1 Corinthians 2:14

Who is he talking about when he says the man without the Spirit? What's another word for that group of people? It's unbelievers, right? He's talking about the non-Christian world. So unbelievers—as we talk about the man without the Spirit—this is non-Christians. They don't accept the things that come from the Spirit. They're foolishness to them. They can't understand them because they're spiritually discerned.

What Paul's doing is he's reducing all of the human experience down to one thing, and that is what aspect of our being is he describing in verse 14? I don't know if that's too vague for you. You'll know when I tell you, but what's he talking about here? What part of who you are?

It's our nature, but like, you are—I'll give you this—a person's a person because they have intellect, emotion, and will, right? This is you. You have thoughts, you have feelings, you have actions. Which one is he talking about here? Intellect, right? It's your thoughts. It's like, you don't understand.

Now, the man without the Spirit also has jacked up emotions. The man without the Spirit also has jacked up behaviors. He's just making it simple. One thing: understanding. And what he's saying is without the Spirit, the gospel sounds like total idiocy.

Do you remember this when it seems stupid to you, or have you ever done evangelism and you talk to somebody and you make it as simple and clear and plain as you can, and they're just like, "Yeah, that's ridiculous"? Do you know this feature? Okay, so the man without the Spirit doesn't understand it. It's foolishness. He can't understand it because they're spiritually discerned.

So there's two kinds of people in the world. One of them are non-Christians for whom this all just looks so stupid, right? We're fools for Christ. Look at the other person:

The spiritual man makes judgment about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. — 1 Corinthians 2:15-16

What he's describing is that for Christians, essentially, we have the cheat code. We are able to understand and to plumb the depths of divine wisdom, not because we're smarter than we used to be or smarter than they still are, but because God is indwelling us and is giving us a new ability. He is impacting our mind.

Now, he's also going to impact our emotions and our will, but nevertheless, he's just talking about the intellect. There are non-Christians for whom this stuff is idiocy, and then there are Christians who have a new supernatural ability to grasp it. There's two kinds of people in the world. There are Christians, and there are non-Christians. That's Paul's argument. So far so good? This is new. This is because of Ezekiel 36. This is because of the new covenant, but then you got to watch what he says next.

There's two kinds of people in the world, and then there's you. You freak mutant half and halves. That's his next line. He says in 3-1, "Brothers," who's he talking to? Christians or non-Christians? Christians.

"I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly." — 1 Corinthians 3:1

What he's saying is there's two kinds of people in the world. There's non-Christians and there's Christians. There's those who don't have the Spirit, and then there's those who do have the Spirit. And then there's you. And you are Christians who act like non-Christians, and what in the world is that?

"Brothers, I couldn't address you as spiritual. You are Christians, but I can't act like you are because you're worldly. You're like babies, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you are not yet ready for it. And indeed, you're still not ready." — 1 Corinthians 3:1-2

He's saying, "Listen, it's not simply that you're immature. Six months old are supposed to drink milk, right?" But they progress to some horrible kind of rice mush, right? And a strained peas and a chicken, right? And you're still back here drinking from the bottle.

"You're still worldly. There's still jealousy and quarreling among you. Are you not worldly?" — 1 Corinthians 3:3

And then here's the key line.

"Are you not acting like mere men? You are Christians. You are brothers. You are in Him. But you're pretending you guys are all the pagans now. You're pretending to be mere men."

You hear what he's saying? It's two kinds of people in the world. There's non-Christians and there's Christians. And then there's you, Christians who act like non-Christians. What's your deal? Okay? That's the argument.

"Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says I follow Paul and another I follow Apollos, are you not mere men?" — 1 Corinthians 3:4

Being Indwelt vs. Being Filled

Is Paul saying that these Christians who act like non-Christians are not indwelt by the Spirit? He's not saying that. This is important. If you are a Christian, then you do have the Spirit. But apparently, and I say this, not just based on what the Scriptures say, but based on what I've experienced in the lives of you all and me all, is that apparently we can be indwelt with the Spirit, but not really directed by the Spirit. Have you noticed this?

Okay. What is the primary metaphor that the Bible uses to describe a Christian who is not only indwelt by the Spirit, but under the control and direction of the Spirit? What do we call that? This is the good version there. They are indwelt and they are controlled and empowered by the Spirit. Spirit filled.

This is what the New Testament says, over and over and over again. You are indwelt. If you are in Christ, the Spirit of God lives in you, but it doesn't necessarily follow that you are moment by moment filled by the Spirit.

Here's how this is going to be described throughout. I'll just read you a bunch of these.

"Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'Rulers and elders of the people,'" — Acts 4:8

And he goes on and preached this great big bold sermon. Later on in that same chapter, after they prayed:

"The place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly." — Acts 4:31

"Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom, and we will turn this responsibility over to them." — Acts 6:3

"This proposal pleased the whole group, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and also fill up in a bunch of other dudes." — Acts 6:5

All Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but not all Christians are moment by moment filled by His Spirit. And the apex, you guys, of Ezekiel 36, the greatest fulfillment of why God sends the third person of the Trinity to us is that we might not merely be indwelt, but that we would be richly filled by Him. So I want to talk, we're going to spend the rest of our time talking about that metaphor, what it means.

Bob, you want to say something? No, I just was looking up filled by the Holy Spirit. And Luke, apparently, is the only one that uses that phrase regularly. And he uses it to talk in chapter 1 about Zachariah and Elizabeth and John the Baptist, who's going to be. And then all throughout Acts filled with the Spirit, and then once in Ephesians. But I was like, you would think it would have been everywhere, but it's like Luke really kept it. It's a Luke and metaphor. Paul uses it in Ephesians 5.

That's a very familiar thing. And we shouldn't maybe be surprised that there's any correspondence between Luke and Paul because they're best buddies. Paul is unmistakably Luke's hero, right? And probably the influence runs both ways.

The most famous statement on being filled with the Spirit is Ephesians 5, where Paul says—okay, we're going to look at this now. Paul talks about being filled with the Spirit in Ephesians 5. He talks about walking in the Spirit or keeping in step with the Spirit in Galatians 5. Same imagery, same idea.

So what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, there's a situation where to be filled with the Spirit is where we have surrendered those parts of our flesh or will that block the Holy Spirit. And it's interesting because it can take a long time—years of the Holy Spirit chipping away at the bad parts of it—or it can come in a moment of revelation like it did with Paul. Instantly filled with the Spirit and dramatic change.

You see early in the book of Acts, you absolutely see the dramatic change version—the Spirit comes on people very quickly and very powerfully. But I think most of us experience in our lives is that as we yield more and more to him, we experience more and more of him.

What Does "Filled" Mean?

What does the metaphor mean to be filled with the Spirit? What does that conjure in your minds?

Control. Okay, why? Well, look at what Paul says:

Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit — Ephesians 5

He's saying don't be under the influence of this, but be rather under the influence of this. This is good. So if you think about this one way—if you are filled with wine, how hard is it for you to act drunk? It's effortless, right?

When Paul says, don't get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, this isn't random. He's not saying, don't eat McDonald's chicken McNuggets, do be filled with the Spirit. It's not some random culinary advice. He is observing that there's something about being filled with wine that will shape your behavior. It will empower you in one way. It will direct you in some way. And he says, don't let that be your controlling influence. Instead, choose a different one. So the notion of filling can be helpful at a metaphorical level to think about: alcohol fills me, and when it does, it controls me.

What else? I thought there were a couple of hands.

To me, it's been kind of like the bit in a horse's mouth. I have experienced that literally holding me back. You know, I wanted to go forward, but when I watched a lot of people riding horses, it's like you're holding him back. He really wants to go, but he's trusting you too because you say, "I don't really want to do this unless you really turn it back."

What's interesting about that is that sometimes being filled with the Spirit is that he's giving us power to move forward, but sometimes he's giving us power to hold back. And there's a lot of times in our lives where it takes more power to hold back instead of to go forward. Have you noticed this?

The Saturation Illustration

I'll go a bit with the science here. When you dissolve salt in water, you can put the salt in cold water, but very little salt is actually going to dissolve. But if you heat the water up, more salt goes in to the point where it's saturated. Yes, super saturated if you boil it. Okay, so his version is not going to be as yummy as my version, but it's the same exact idea.

If you got a glass of water and you dump salt in it and you drink it, what's it going to taste like? It's going to taste like water unless you stir it, and then it's going to taste like salt water. My version of that is you take a glass of milk and you pour Hershey's syrup into it and you take a drink. What's it going to taste like?

What do you have to do? Stir it. Okay, saturate. I don't know if that's super saturation. Smarty pants is over there, but in order for the milk to be filled, to be indwelt with chocolate—unless the milk is filled with the chocolate, it's not changing the milk. It's not altering the nature of the milk. You just got sludge in the bottom of the glass, right? It's indwelt, but it's not permeating it.

There's a strong element in being filled of openness or surrender on our part too. We can stop that most of the time. I'm not sure Paul could have in his conversion, but we can interfere and scream. This right here—this is probably the thing that I really was most excited to get to.

Ezekiel 36: He will put his spirit in us. He has put his spirit in us. — John 14-16

But by the time we get to 1 Corinthians 2, we're like, hang on a second. Time out. It seems like I have the ability to interfere with that. When Paul exhorts us to keep in step with the spirit, well, apparently we can also not keep in step. Apparently we can screw this up, right?

Here's what I think is the most helpful metaphor for what it means to be filled. I want you to think about a sail on a sailboat. Think about when that sail is filled with wind. If this sail were to be filled with wind, and it's tied to a mast and there's a boat, what would the wind be giving to the sail and therefore to the boat?

Speed. The ability to move. We're going to call that power. And what else? Direction. Power and direction. Those two things—when we talk about the spirit filling his people, what we mean is that he is giving us power and direction. Sometimes, power to move forward. Sometimes, power to stay still, right? Power and direction.

And what's the key thing that the sail has to do in order to be filled with wind? Unfurled. Yielded. Available. And if it's out and the wind is blowing—the wind is blowing. The problem is never that there's no wind. It's never that there's no spirit. It's never that he's not providing power or direction. The problem is that our sails are like this.

The Yielded Life

Here's how this tends to work in our lives. Here's the sail of my life, and I yield to him. The spirit-filled life is fundamentally the yielded life. We're here, and we're like, Lord, fill me. Give me your power. Give me your direction. Except one second—my money. My money's mine. But otherwise, Lord, fill me with your power and direction. Well, except my sex life, because shut up about that. Fill me with your power and direction, but I am not going to reconcile with that person because what they said was so mean. Fill me with your power and direction, except I'm not really particularly in an obedient mood. Fill me with your power and direction—and it doesn't work. Soul tumors, right? Every one of these things is going to say, I'm not yielding. I'm not going to surrender.

And what tends to happen is when we've got all these parts of our lives tucked away, we're like, fill me. I want all the power and direction I can get as long as I can do whatever I want, whenever I want—and it doesn't work. Then what happens is this sailboat that is designed to be fueled by his power, given direction by him—we turn it into a rowboat because the sail seems broken.

But here's the biggest thing I want you to understand: You are not a rowboat. And the secret of the Christian life is not row harder. Try more. You are a sailboat. And the secret of the Christian life is yield more. Surrender more. Let his power, his direction move the boat.

When we start wadding up our sail, his power and direction blows by us. And then we get out the oars, and the Christian life feels hard. And I'm pretty sure that everyone in this room knows exactly what I'm talking about. Have you ever pulled an oar? Yeah.

I also think of the sailboat—the sail has to be attached properly. If it's not attached, it's going to hang there. And it makes me think of the verse:

He is the vine; we are the branches. — John 15

That's right. Our lives, what time is it? Our lives are linked to him. The spirit-filled life is the yielded life. We yield to him. We let his power do the pushing instead of us feeling like we've got to oar our way through this.

I feel like that rowboat thing is really what stops most people from believing in the Christian's message.

Because you could share their parts where people will be like, "Oh, no, I don't want to do this area of the Bible." But really what I've seen a lot is it's either, "I don't want to yield anything"—okay, that's a problem. But then it's, "I don't want to feel like I'm doing everything." That's what I see most people viewing Christianity as.

You're exactly right. So we could always fall into religion or irreligion at all times. The Christian gospel, Christianity is neither religion nor irreligion. When you became a Christian, you had to repent of both your unrighteousness—your irreligion. But you also have to repent of your self-righteousness, which is your religion. Your assumption that it all depends on you.

When we tend to be like, "Well, it's one or the other," Jesus says, "It's actually neither." There is this other thing where I trust him and he gives me all that I need. I'm neither living in my licentious wickedness, nor my goody-two-shoes, self-congratulatory self-righteousness. But some other thing where life is guided by trusting in a God who imputes righteousness and advises me to live in this jet stream of his power. It is different. It is neither one.

People, depending on where you're coming from, might see Christianity as a license for sin. It's fundamentally irreligious. You might see it as self-righteousness and judgmentalism, and it's fundamentally religious. And Jesus is like, "It's actually neither one of those." We yield to him trusting that he will give us all that we need.

Katherine mentioned Scripture that says, "It is he who is working us to will and to do." That always comes up. And she has to pray this song that says, "Plead for understanding." It's like, "You are making me want to do this, but you're also enabling me to do it." And that takes some real work.

The Pattern of Christian Life

That's a great story because the last thing I've got to say before we get out of here is this: What Katherine is describing, this thing is difficult. It's hard. It's also intermittent.

You were indwelt by the Holy Spirit one time. When you became a Christian, he moved in and he never leaves. This is binary, right? It's not like you're indwelt, now you're not indwelt. You're indwelt, now you're not. This happens and it's done. If you are in Christ, the Spirit of God lives in you. Full stop.

However, your filling, your being yielded to him, that changes often. I've said this before, and you may recall: your life is necessarily shaped like a sine curve. Your life is sin and repentance. Sin and repentance. Sin and repentance. It's always like this. It'll never not be like this.

But you have at least two options, right? The shape of your life could either be sin and repentance, sin and repentance, sin and repentance—short intervals, quick accounts. You recognize, "Oh Lord, I've done it again. Forgive me again." Or your life could be sin, repentance, sin, repentance, sin, repentance with longer intervals. It's always going to be up and down.

That up and down is this: the up and down is when I become aware. When I'm here living my life and then somebody cuts me off and it makes me mad and I start to water up my sail. And it's been an hour or it's been a day or whatever it is, and I realize, "Oh shoot. Yield again."

Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade, who's taught me most of what I know about the spiritual life, used to talk about spiritual breathing. In the same way you're always inhaling—appropriating the atmosphere and getting all the oxygen—then you're getting rid of what is it? Carbon dioxide or something. You're getting rid of the stuff that's going to kill you. That's all your breathing is.

Your life is in with the Spirit and out with sin. In with the Spirit and out with sin. One tweak on that is that the oxygen supply is already inside you. You're not getting Spirit that you didn't have. You're simply yielding to it. You're appropriating the Spirit that's already there.

And in the same way that your life is inhale, exhale—sin and repentance, sin and repentance—it's exhale and inhale and exhale and inhale. Your life will look like that. Nobody just lives in a state of holy perfection. It'd be lovely. You will. The day is coming when you will, but this isn't it.

In the meantime, our lives are marked by sin and repentance, sin and repentance. Wadding up the sail, yielding it again, wadding up the sail, yielding it again. And the hope is that we will recognize instead of building strategies to row more, the Christian life will be one of yield sooner. Surrender quickly.

This is why every week we have a time of confession here so that if you're not doing it every day, every hour, every five minutes, we have at least these kind of fire breaks in the week. We're like, oh, Lord, once again. I acknowledge to you and I confess and I hit reset to yield again so that nothing would interfere with the power of the Spirit alive in my life. And as I do that, the more time that I'm spending with my sail out capturing his power and direction, the more that we will experience what Dan busted me for this morning.

So in these two weeks, nobody's mentioned not just the gifts of the Spirit, but the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. That whole list from Galatians 5. And as we are yielding to him, he will produce fruit in our lives. Our lives will look increasingly like this entire bouquet of what he is, right? That comes as we are yielded to him, filled by him, empowered by him, directed by him.

Application

We got to be done. Amen? Let me say this. Okay, I said we're done. I was lying. Right now, today, again tomorrow, 16 times on Tuesday, you can say, "Holy Spirit, fill me again. Forgive me. That was stupid. I yield again. Would you give me your power, your direction? Would you move me to follow your decrees and laws?" And you could pray that 20 times a day and be constantly reminding yourself to yield to him, let his power and direction drive your life.

Now we're done. Thank you.