Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 44 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; Rom 5:12- 6:13.

Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 44 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; ROM 5:12- 6:13.

 

Announcements / opening prayer:  

 

 

Always remember that you will make mistakes along the way and often, with the best of intentions, you will attempt to comply with the perfect standard of God in an imperfect way. This doesn't condone sin or failure. It's just a fact of life and our condition in life. God is so patient and longsuffering. He will guide you who are willing and yielding. He does not guide the perfect Christian, since there is no such creature, never has been and never will be on this earth. Part of our victory is to rest in the Lord despite our failures. In fact, this is essential to victory.

 

Passages concerning the yielding of the will and life to God:

 

As Gal 5 states, the deeds of the flesh are evident and the fruit of the Spirit is evident. A believer has the power to fully discern which power he has submitted himself to.

 

A light to guide, a rod

To check the erring, and reprove

[Wordsworth; Ode to Duty]

 

COL 2:6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him [as with Him as Lord],

 

Walking with someone freely is not being dragged by that someone. To walk with the Spirit you must desire His way and walk with Him. This is all done by faith and not works. By faith we chose His way and walk with Him and He empowers us in the works or the fruits of that journey.

 

Christ instructed us to pick up our own crosses and follow Him. He is not dragging you behind Him. This is your choice. As you learn His way do you choose to walk in that way, and if you do, the Spirit will fully influence you, or fill you, that you may do it.

 

Walking by means of the Spirit is not a mechanical thing. We are not dealing with a machine. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God and they are persons. We are dealing with the most loving and tender-hearted and patient God, who is a person and who is for you. Come to know Him and believe in the efficacy of His way and you will walk in the most gratifying relationship that there ever was. You can be open with Him about your sins and failures and gives true thanks to Him for all His deliverances and blessings. You can be open with Him about your worst doubts and darkest secrets. You can open your heart to Him, scars and all, and receive His blessed light and glory and strength. We should fear severing such a communion with Him through sin and independent self-reliance. That is truly the fear of the Lord. We should revel in the recurring peace in our hearts when return to Him by simply acknowledging it to Him and knowing that we are fully forgiven and that our sinful nature has been severed from us in death, cast as far as the east is from the west.

 

COL 2:7 having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

 

COL 2:18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind,

 

COL 2:19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

 

We are to hold fast to the Lord in fellowship with Him so that we may grow and grow.

 

COL 3:15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts

 

COL 3:12 And so, as those who have been chosen of God [called out], holy [set apart] and beloved [loved perfectly by God forever], put on a heart [splagchnon - bowels or affections] of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness [accepts God's dealings with us as good without disputing] and patience;

 

To the Greek poets, bowels were used as the seat of passion such as anger and love. To the Hebrews it was the place of tender affections and so it can be translated as heart as referring to part of our souls were our true affections lie. If our affection is more for the sin nature rather than the heart of God then we will not be those of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience towards others. The sin nature has nothing of this in him. He has the passions and desires of personal lust. He only uses people selfishly. The heart of God is true agape love. So the question here is whether we will be so possessed of the mind of Christ as to have our affections centered solely on His affections.

 

This word is used of God when Zacharias, in dedicating his son John the Baptist, prophesied being filled with the Spirit:

 

LUK 1:76-79

"And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;

For you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways;

To give to His people the knowledge of salvation

By the forgiveness of their sins,

Because of the tender mercy of our God,

With which the Sunrise from on high shall visit us,

To shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,

To guide our feet into the way of peace."

 

The selfish believer does not have the affections of Christ:

 

1JO 3:17

But whoever has the world's goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart [splagchnon] against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

 

MAT 9:13

"But go and learn what this means, 'I desire compassion, and not sacrifice ,'for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

 

The religious thought that God would come for them and so they confuse self-righteousness with the righteousness that is a gift from God.

 

MAT 9:36

And seeing the multitudes, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd.

 

Two blind men crying out to Him:

MAT 20:34

And moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes; and immediately they regained their sight and followed Him.

 

A leper on his knees before Him:

MAR 1:41

And moved with compassion, He stretched out His hand, and touched him, and said to him, "I am willing; be cleansed."

 

The only son of a widow is dead:

LUK 7:13

And when the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her, and said to her, "Do not weep."

 

COL 3:12 And so, as those who have been chosen of God [called out], holy [set apart] and beloved [loved perfectly by God forever], put on a heart [splagchnon - bowels or affections] of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness [accepts God's dealings with us as good without disputing] and patience;

 

Compassion - mercy

Kindness - a gracious and gentle disposition

Humility - a humble opinion of self

Gentleness - grace from the soul, accepting all God's dealings with us as good.

Patience - not easily provoked by injurious persons

 

The Greek word for patience used here is not hupomone, which refers to persisting under trial, but makrothumia, which refers to patience with those who injure you. These are all characteristics of great spiritual leaders. All flow from presenting yourself alive to God and your members as instruments of righteousness.

 

His affections continue.

 

COL 3:13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

 

Joseph Thayer in commenting on the verb enduno [put on; imperative] - "to become so possessed of the mind of Christ as in thought, feeling, and action to resemble Him and, as it were, reproduce the life He lived."

 

The verb is in the imperative, meaning it is a command to be obeyed. It is aorist in tense, which means that the command must be obeyed at once. The "and so" at the beginning of verse twelve shows us that this is obligatory for those men to whom Christ has become all in all. In other words, Christ supersedes all other relations and so His life is the obligation of each believer. This is absolutely impossible for mankind. The believer could never hope to be such a person from the power of his own flesh. It is the Spirit and the word within him that give him the power. The Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit over and above the deeds of the flesh. The believer is to live every day in reliance upon Him.

 

JOH 16:14

"He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.

 

COL 3:14 And beyond [upon] all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

 

The Greek preposition, epi, can also mean upon. It makes love, the greatest of all virtues, to be the binding factor that is like an outer garment to all virtue. To Greeks and Romans, virtue was more in line with human strength and character and not in sacrifice, which was thought to be weakness.

 

1CO 1:23

but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block [cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree], and to Gentiles foolishness [crucified King]