The Holy Spirit reveals our purpose in life.

The Holy Spirit was given to us to proclaim the Person of Christ, described by Christ as the things which the Father has, Joh 16:15.

The Spirit proclaims to us the meaning and truth of the word of God. We hear and see this proclamation if we chose to live holy godly lives.

What I am speaking of here is your life as a whole and not what you happen to be thinking or doing at any given moment. I understand that life is made up of moments and that we live one day at a time. But what I have in mind when anyone may answer the question, “Do you know and understand the things of the Son of God?” is someone’s life as a whole. For instance, was David a man who knew the Lord? We answer confidently yes, for God says of David that he was a man after His heart. We don’t think of David at a given moment, perhaps a moment of failure and sin, but what he loved. He loved the Lord and heard the voice of the Holy Spirit and loved what he heard. The narrative in Scripture gives us a wonderful comparison between David and Saul, Israel’s first king. Saul, in general, was concerned about himself, his kingship, the adoration of the people; he was more concerned with keeping his position and power than he was about the glory of God, and even the glory of the nation of Israel.

2Sa 23:1-7

Now these are the last words of David.

David the son of Jesse declares,

And the man who was raised on high declares,

The anointed of the God of Jacob,

And the sweet psalmist of Israel,

2 "The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me,

And His word was on my tongue.

3 "The God of Israel said,

The Rock of Israel spoke to me,

'He who rules over men righteously,

Who rules in the fear of God,

4 Is as the light of the morning when the sun rises,

A morning without clouds,

When the tender grass springs out of the earth,

Through sunshine after rain.'

5 "Truly is not my house so with God?

For He has made an everlasting covenant with me,

Ordered in all things, and secured;

For all my salvation and all my desire,

Will He not indeed make it grow?

6 "But the worthless, every one of them will be thrust away like thorns,

Because they cannot be taken in hand;

7 But the man who touches them

Must be armed with iron and the shaft of a spear,

And they will be completely burned with fire in their place."

Jesus said that those who do not produce fruit are like dried-up vine branches. The Spirit spoke to David and David listened. In vs. 3 David rules in the fear of God. In vs. 5, David is sure that God will make his desires grow. If David’s desires were not the same as the Lord’s, then this could not be.

The scripture focuses on our lives in general, our pattern of life, character as a rule, what we are pursuing, what we truly honor and love, and it also tells us to pursue this one day at a time. I think that the tendency to think of spirituality on a momentary basis can be misleading. “I was spiritual for an hour here, a minute there,” etc. We do live moment to moment, but what is it that you love and pursue, for this will determine the character of the majority of those moments and will determine whether you really come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

Php 3:10

that I may know Him

Eph 4:13

until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man

The character of holiness and godliness gives us eyes to see and ears to hear the proclamation of the Spirit – the Person of Christ.

After pointing out the blindness and the deafness of the Pharisees, and then casting out a demon from a blind and deaf man, and them then accusing Him of doing miracles by the power of Satan, Jesus points out to them that there is a kingdom of Satan and a kingdom of God. A kingdom divided against itself cannot endure, and if He has cast out demons by the power of God, He has overpowered the leader of Satan’s kingdom and the kingdom of God was upon them.

Each kingdom has a king and each kingdom has a way.

There is so much here that is of the foundational reason for humanity and human history and it is vital to the crux of our own lives. It gets right to the heart of the purpose of our lives.

Those who see and hear God’s kingdom are focused on the good (with the Spirit’s help) – holiness and godliness (devotion).

We all sin and fail from time to time. We all could do everything better, for we are always growing up spiritually. This is about what we love, desire, are diligent to do, understand, etc., as a rule throughout our years.

Mar 4:10-20

And as soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables. 11 And He was saying to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God; but those who are outside get everything in parables, 12 in order that while seeing, they may see and not perceive; and while hearing, they may hear and not understand lest they return and be forgiven. " 13 And He said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? And how will you understand all the parables? 14 "The sower sows the word. 15 "And these are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown; and when they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them. 16 "And in a similar way these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; 17 and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 "And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, 19 and the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. 20 "And those are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the word and accept it, and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold."

Jesus gives the interpretation to the disciples when they ask Him. They ask and seek and knock. In Matthew, Jesus explains that the seed that fell beside the road as those who when they heard the word did not understand it and while it remained a mystery, in some way Satan came and took it away.

For the ones with no firm root, they hear with joy, but because of affliction or persecution they fall away. If tough times are enough to drive you away from the word of God and the life that allows you to hear, then knowing Christ is not your top priority – you are.

For the ones among the thorns, but worry and the thought that the world’s riches and other things are the source of joy and fulfillment choke the word (choke or suffocation is the meaning). It is interesting in this third case that they don’t fall away and that the word is still with them, but it becomes unfruitful. I would say that these know of the Lord from the word but haven’t invested time and concentration along with faith into the word so as to understand it. Why? They are in pursuit of other “things.” In this case Jesus uses the word loipos, which means “the rest” or “the remainder.”

What chokes the word is the deceitfulness of riches and “desires” (epithumia – lusts) for “the remainder.”

If the word is suffocated and that is what the Spirit is proclaiming to us, how could we come to know the Son of God and the Father whose things He has?

I love the image – the love of money is the root of all evil, but there is the rest or remainder in the world that people, including Christians, lust for. That said, what is the problem that causes them not to see and hear what would give them life abundantly.

They love other things – things of the world. The cost to them is immense – no fruit. Their lives, in comparison to what it could be with Christ, looks like a dried-up vine branch (Joh 15:6).

In this study of the Holy Spirit revealing the Person of Christ to us, the word “things” keeps popping up. Here we hear of the things of the world. The Spirit is showing us the things of Christ. We are each stuck in the lurch, in the middle we are appealed to by both sides.