Bill Johnson - Led By The Spirit
Romans 8 could probably be a book of the Bible by itself. Maybe you could say that for every chapter, but, some chapters are very dependent on what precedes it, what follows. Romans 8 is just this, I don’t know, it’s just a complete package. Chapter 8, to me, is the crown Jewel of these five chapters. It’s the crown Jewel because, the highlight, the emphasis in this chapter is our relationship with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the central person, the central theme in this chapter. It’s not Abraham. It’s not the crucifixion. It’s the Holy Spirit who has been given to us in this it’s important for this reason: everyone in this room that is born again, you are born again because he spoke, you listened and responded. None of us found God. He found us. Yeah, yeah. It’s like running from God through this forest and you trip over a rock.
And you look up and he’s looking at you. And you say, «I’m so glad I found you». That’s basically how all of us got saved. We ended up with seeing that there was only one reasonable option. And it was to give ourselves to him. And so, anyway, all of us are alive because we heard him speak and we responded. The Holy Spirit is the central person in our life and every triumph, every victory, every enablement, every bit of grace, everything that we experience in this life in following Jesus is there and it’s active because the Holy Spirit is in our life. The Holy Spirit is God on earth. Everything about our life either succeeds or fails because of a relationship with him. I’m not referring to an emotion, although emotions are included. I’m not talking about feelings, although feelings are included. It is a relationship with a person.
This Christian life is a relational journey. And it is a relationship with God on earth who is the Holy Spirit, who perfectly represents Jesus, who completely and perfectly manifests the will of the father. I’ve had certain things happen to me through the years where I became unusually aware of him. And it’s terrifying and wonderful, all at the same time, and I don’t wanna live any other way. Heightened awareness. It’s not imaginary. It’s not that. Oh, it’s like Jacob said, when he woke up from that dream, he said, «God is here and I didn’t even know it». Sudden heightened awareness to a reality that existed before you as aware. The Holy Spirit lives in you. He’s also called Paraclete, the one called alongside to help.
So, the whole point is I would like, today, to just help with a heightened awareness of God on earth that I have actually received as a down payment of an inheritance. Now, I don’t understand that. If there’s ever a mind-boggling thought, it’s the fact that God gave us himself as our inheritance and the initial payment is the Holy Spirit himself. The down payment. He’s called «Down payment» in Ephesians, the down payment of our inheritance. Larry Randolph made a comment years ago. He said, «If God is as big as he says he is, he shouldn’t be that hard to find». Well, someone that large in my life should not be that hard to discern. And if he is, I must have my heart and mind anchored in things that are very inferior that have deadened what he has created in me as a capacity to recognize him.
Verse 1 of chapter 8: «There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit». Verse 14: «For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God». Now, go back to verse 1. «There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit». Those who are in Christ walk according to the spirit. That is the testimony of scripture. Those who are in Christ. The evidence of my conversion is that I don’t live according to carnal values fleshly, carnal expressions and values, but instead by the holy my life with Christ is illustrated because of a partnership with God on earth, the Holy Spirit. It’s illustrated. It is measurable. And he goes on to say that those who are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God.
The reason I wanna hit on this for just a moment, we’re actually gonna spend more time later in the chapter, but the reason I wanted to hit on this for just a moment is some, there are certain subjects in the gospel that sometimes it feels to me like they have been elevated so high that they are unreachable. And being led by the Spirit is one of those. And it is not. It’s your nature to be led by the Spirit. Have you ever just thought of somebody you wanted to call or maybe swing by and visit? It wasn’t no thundering voice from God. You know, you just: «Oh, I should call them». And you call them and you find out it was a miracle moment that God actually directed you.
You see, Jesus made a statement. He said: «My sheep know my voice». What does he mean by that? There’s a familiarity to the voice of God, to the life of a believer, so much so that there are times where I would have thought it was simply my desire and I find out, afterwards, it was actually the voice of God. There’s such similarity. Living immersed in Christ puts us in a place where we constantly are hearing that familiar voice. I don’t mean overly familiar in a wrong sense, but that familiar voice. It’s not the thundering voice from the outside. It’s that cry from the inside. And the beautiful part about this is the more we learn to yield ourselves to this work of the Holy Spirit, the more walking in the spirit, so to it’s the normal reaction to a given situation.
So, we move on to verse, let’s see, twenty-six. It says: «Likewise the spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know», I mean, are you got weakness? Anybody aware of those? Yeah. But we probably wouldn’t have listed the one he listed. «For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered». So, he considers it a weakness for us not to know what to pray for. Verse 27: «Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God».
Now, I don’t know how you look at this. This is how I look at it: «God, I want a million dollars». And then, I pray in tongues. And the Holy Spirit says: man, don’t give him a million dollars. Do not listen to that last request. Because we’re trying to make him like Jesus and that’ll only mess things up. He always prays exactly according to the heart and to the will of God. He knows exactly the tools, the elements, the issues that will take us to where we are all headed. We’ve all been predestined, according to scripture, predestined to be conformed into the image of so, everything that he does in us, he works in us to that end, that the end result, we would adequately represent Jesus well. Eastern meditation is you empty the mind: biblical meditation is you fill the mind.
Here’s the verse that would probably do us well to prayerfully meditate on for verse 32: «He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things»? Stunning verse. Biblical meditation seems to be almost a lost art, at least in many circles. Eastern meditation is you empty the mind: biblical meditation is you fill the mind. It’s completely different. Eastern meditation actually opens you up to a spirit world, realm, where you can easily come into the influence of an evil spirit. Biblical meditation is joining your mind with the mind of Christ. And consider, actually, probably the best illustration of meditation, biblical meditation, is a cow chewing its cud.
It brings it up to chew over and over and over again. That’s what meditation is is you take a thought, a verse and you review it. You pray over it. You think about it. You maybe quote it. You write it on paper, put it on the dashboard of your car. It’s just something you review over and over again because you can tell: there is something here for me and I don’t wanna glance over it quickly. I wanna make sure that the full impact of this verse hits me. This is one of 'em. How can this father, who freely gave us his son to suffer in ways that are how would he do something so extreme and not also include everything else that is short of that extreme? If he did this, do you think your car payment doesn’t matter to him? Do you think it’s possible for a father that is that good to go to this extreme to not care about what you care about?
We make him this religious feature that cares about spiritual things and nothing else. And, it’s just not consistent with the testimony of scripture. It’s not consistent with the lifestyle, the model that Jesus himself gave for us. And so, here’s this statement, a statement that could stand by itself for eternity: how shall he, who gave us his son to not only die a most gruesome death, but to carry upon his flesh the weight of every sin of every human being in all of time, the most gruesome death ever experienced because of that, how could there by anything that would come up in our life that wouldn’t matter to him?
This chapter is to endear us to the Spirit of God, who models and illustrates this kind of father, who models and illustrates this kind of compassion, this kind of deep, deep, deep concern. Jump down to verse, excuse me, «Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us». Here’s the interesting thing: verse 26 and 7 says the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us. Twenty-eight says all things work together for good. Thirty-four says Jesus makes intercession for us. I wonder why everything works out. What does intercession mean? It means to stand in the shoes of another. Sometimes we pray at a situation. Intercession stands in the shoes of and prays on behalf of, as though it was our own issue. You pray for your neighbor.
It’s not just praying at them: we pray as though their and this is incredible. Jesus and the Holy Spirit both put on our shoes and pray for us, as though our issues were theirs. And they’re approaching the father not because he has chosen evil and they’re trying to talk him out of it. There’s been that concept for years that couldn’t be any more wrong. It’s the Holy Spirit and Jesus that are coming before the father because prayer is his assignment. It is his will. This is how the economy of heaven functions: there is a partnership and there are requests. And in this request, the partnership of God and man, or the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is illustrated through perfect unity, perfect camaraderie.
And, here, they pray for you and for me. And sandwiched in between the testimony of God praying for us is the covenant promise it’ll all work and it’ll all verse 37: «We are more than conquerors through him who loved us». Verse 38: «I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord». I remember early in my walk with the Lord, I remember finding this verse in the gospel of John that I just, I put to memory, for my sake, where Jesus said: and no one can remove you from my father’s hand. There’s this picture of the no one can remove you from my hands.
And so, here it describes all of creation, the good, the bad, the ugly. Says there’s not one part of it that has the ability to create a wedge and to separate you from the love of God. That means that you and I live in continuous connection to the expression of God’s love. It is good news. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. There is this seamless connection between you and the heart of God and nothing can separate that. My problem is I can live aware of inferior things and lose the God-given sensitivities to his heart for me. It doesn’t mean his love is changed. It just means I don’t live conscious of it. You remember at the beginning I talked about heightened awareness?
In 1 Corinthians 2, he talks about that, that you can’t hear the promises, the richness of God’s word, you can’t hear through carnal means. You can only hear it through the spirit. So, right now, in this room, there are FM signals, am signals, TV signals, shortwave. There’s all these different things that are actually right if you have a receiver, you can pick 'em up. And it’s the spirit of man that becomes aware of God and his voice. Suddenly, I start hearing things that I didn’t hear before, only because I had my dial turned to receiving from what God is saying and doing. But it doesn’t mean it wasn’t interestingly, in this passage, he says, at the end of verse 38, he says: «Nor things present nor things to come».
In 1 Corinthians 3 is a description of our inheritance and he mentions things present and things to come. What’s missing? The past. Why? 'cause he bought it. He bought it. It’s not yours. The moment is yours, the future is yours, the past is not. It’s not yours. And the issue of life is if we revisit the events of our past apart, separate from, our awareness of the blood of Jesus, then we actually visit something that no longer exists. We visit a lie. When you empower a lie, you empower the liar. So, twice, Paul says «Things present, things to come».
Things present, things to come. The past has been purchased. I have no legal access to it, apart from the redemptive touch of Jesus. If there’s an issue I haven’t dealt with, he brings it up, always with redemptive purpose, never to lead me into shame. Because, the past, under the blood of Jesus, is no reason for shame. It is the reason for triumph and victory: it is the reason for celebration. If I could pray for something out of this conversation today, it would be the heightened awareness of the presence of the Spirit of God and the redemptive work of Jesus that those two things stir up such a courage and such a vision for the impossible that there’s no more mediocrity.
There is no more embracing the inferior. Suddenly, people become enraged in the right sense for the things that God has purposed to do in the earth. There’s this thing that takes place in the heart of a believer that says: wait a minute. I was born for more than this. As I’ve said so many times through the years, Jesus didn’t go through what he went through so we could do church. We got, I love, I don’t think the corporate gathering is emphasized enough. I think he has greater intent than what we realize, so I believe in it a lot.
But it’s to set us up to bring transformation, to bring the life of Christ, the presence of God into this environment and this chapter, right here, it starts off with just the pronouncement. There’s no condemnation. And it ends with the past is not yours. You own the moment, you own the future, let’s go for it, this partnership with the Spirit of God, this that the Holy Spirit and Jesus are praying for. I may pray inaccurately, but he adjusts my prayer so that it’s perfect. I may have a wrong idea of what happened, but he corrects it. And in the relational journey, I get my value, my thoughts, my memory of my own history becomes recalibrated to what he says is true.