LIFE-STUDY OF EZEKIEL
Message 17
THE OUTWARD AND INWARD RESTORATION BY LIFE
WEEK 8 - MONDAY
Scripture Reading: Eph 2:1, 1 Cor 3:2, 6:17, 7:25, 12:13, 13:1
Read and pray: “For the Holy Scriptures say, ‘Adam, the first man, became a living soul. But the last Adam, Jesus Christ, is the life-giving Spirit.’” (1 Cor 15:45)
Receiving the Lord with Our Spirit
We love the Lord with our heart. The heart is the loving organ, but it is not the receiving organ. In order to have or receive anything, we must use the proper organ. If we want to contact the Lord, receive the Lord, enjoy the Lord, eat the Lord, and drink the Lord, we need a spirit. While we love the Lord with our heart, we contact the Lord and receive Him with our spirit.
First, we must love the Lord. This means that we have an appetite for the Lord. If we do not have love for the Lord nor an appetite for Him, we will not go to Him or receive Him.
Before we were saved, we did not love the Lord and we did not have any appetite for Him. Instead, our taste was for the world and for the things of the world, especially worldly entertainment. When people spoke to us about the Lord Jesus, we did not care to listen. We had no interest, because we had no appetite. We loved other things, and our heart was set on those things.
However, one day the Lord granted us His gracious visitation, and immediately our appetite was changed. We began to love the Lord and the Bible, and we lost our appetite for worldly things. This was the gracious work of the Lord, and it caused our heart to turn from the world to the Lord.
We need to love the Lord Jesus and have an appetite for Him, which will cause us to turn away from our appetite for other things. We must be able to say to the Lord Jesus that we love Him and that we hunger and thirst for Him. Once we have gained such a loving appetite for the Lord, we need to use our spirit as the organ to contact Him, receive Him, eat Him, drink Him, and breathe Him.
Now we can see that we need two organs: a loving heart and a receiving spirit. The receiving spirit has been greatly neglected by many Christians. In some places, the messages stir up the loving heart of the people, but they give them no help to exercise their spirit. We thank the Lord that He has given us not only a new heart to love Him, but also a new spirit to contact Him, receive Him, and contain Him.
A Pliable Heart
The new heart that the Lord has given us is very pliable. Instead of an inflexible, hard, and stony heart, we now have a heart of flesh, a heart that is pliable toward the Lord.
Before we were saved, we could do many sinful things without any feeling of regret. Since our heart was inflexible and hard, we had no inward feeling concerning sin. But when we were saved, our heart was changed by the Lord. Now we have a pliable heart.
For example, we may speak only part of a sentence and feel that we are wrong and that we should not have said anything. Immediately we stop speaking and perhaps even apologize for what we said.
At other times, because our heart is pliable, we may be troubled even by a small mistake or by a slight impurity in our motive. This proves that we have been converted and resurrected, that we have turned to the Lord, and that our heart has become sensitive and pliable.
Exercising Our Spirit
We also need to exercise our spirit. A loving heart is not enough. In addition to a loving heart, we need a renewal, a receiving spirit.
We had a human spirit before we were saved, but it was mortified. In Ephesians 2:1 Paul says that we were dead in our offenses and sins. This certainly means that we were dead not in our body or our soul, but in our spirit.
While we were living in our body, we were mortified in our spirit. When we were saved, the Lord Jesus made our spirit alive. Thus, we now have a revived and renewed spirit.
You may find it difficult to discern the difference between your spirit and your heart. Instead of trying to analyze the difference, we can recognize the difference according to our experience.
When we consider how sweet and precious the Lord Jesus is and how much He has done for us, we may become stirred in our emotion and say, “Lord Jesus, I love You!” This is an expression of our loving heart.
But when we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, we may realize that deep within something different from our heart has been exercised. This is our spirit. Just as we know that we have two feet and use them to walk, we know that we have a spirit by exercising it to contact the Lord.
One of the best ways to use our spirit to contact the Lord is to call, “O Lord Jesus!” When we exercise our spirit in this way, we have the sense of something moving deep within our being. That something is our spirit.
In his subtlety, Satan has hidden the matter of the human spirit from most Christians. When most believers read the Bible, they do not exercise their spirit; they exercise only their mind.
When we read the Bible, we need to exercise the spirit as well as our mind. We should never neglect our spirit. If we do not exercise our spirit, we cannot be proper Christians. It is tragic that Christians are taught to take care of the mind but not to take care of the spirit.
Many are concerned with fundamental teachings or with Pentecostal gifts, but according to history, teachings and gifts have not been effective in the building up of the church. Obviously, teachings and gifts have some value; nevertheless, the main thing we need today is the exercise of the spirit. This is the most crucial, vital, and prevailing matter.
First Corinthians speaks not only of gifts but also of many other things. For example, in chapter three, Paul speaks about food and growth. Verse 2 says, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able.”
In verse 6 he continues, saying, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” This is not a word concerning gifts. In 12:13 Paul says, “For also in one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free; and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.” In this verse, Paul says that we were positioned to drink of one Spirit, but he says nothing about gifts.
Another crucial verse in 1 Corinthians is 15:45b: “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” Many readers of 1 Corinthians appreciate the word in chapters twelve and fourteen about speaking in tongues and prophecy, but they neglect 15:45b.
Which do you prefer: speaking in tongues or Christ as the life-giving Spirit? If we compare the life-giving Spirit with speaking in tongues, we may say that the life-giving Spirit is like gold and speaking in tongues is like bronze.
In 13:1 Paul says, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become sounding bronze or a clanging cymbal.” This indicates a sound without life. If we spoke the tongues of men and of angels and yet did not have life in our spirit, such speech would be like sounding bronze. Paul’s word here indicates that speaking in tongues is not a matter of life. Speaking in tongues is not an expression of life.
At this point it is necessary to consider Paul’s way of speaking in 1 Corinthians 7. Unlike many in Pentecostalism today, Paul did not say, “Thus says the Lord.” Instead, in verse 25 he said, “I have no commandment from the Lord; yet I give my opinion, as one who has received mercy from the Lord to be faithful.”
The expression “Thus says the Lord” is taken from the Old Testament, but it is not used by the writers of the New Testament. Peter, Paul, and John do not use this expression. Instead of following Pentecostalism to adopt the expressions of the Old Testament, we should learn to exercise our spirit to be one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor 6:17). This means that we must realize that in His inward restoration by life, He has given us a new spirit.
🌿Enjoy more:
Hymn: Experience of God - “By Exercising the Spirit”
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