#14: The Leading of the Spirit

I. Introduction
A. It is common to hear references in Christian circles to following the leading of the Holy Spirit (HS). Usually these references speak of following the leading of the HS in the sense of the Spirit giving us guidance about what to do or choose.
B. Today we will examine what the Bible says about being led by the HS.
C. Read Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:18
II. In the Bible there are three meanings of “being led by the Spirit” or “being led by the Lord.”
A. Providential — referring to God’s sovereign control of all things
1. E.g. Lead us not into temptation – Matt.6:13 (i.e. in Your ordering of all things in my life, do not put me in a place where I will be tempted to sin against You)
B. Prophetical – special, supernatural instructions from God
1. The pillar of cloud and fire leading the Israelites through the wilderness
2. Jesus led into the wilderness – Luke 4:1ff.
3. Philip led to the Ethiopian eunuch’s chariot in Acts 8:29
4. The elders of the church in Antioch Led to set apart Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13:1-4
5. Paul and coworkers directed by God in Acts 16:6-7
6. Paul directed to Jerusalem in Ac.20:22
7. In this kind of prophetic revelation, the HS leads certain people into special knowledge:
a. 2Peter 1:20–21 “No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
b. John 16:12–14 Jesus to His disciples: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
C. His sanctifying work in our hearts — drawing us to Himself, granting us repentance, revealing to us how beautiful He is, moving us to do His will (led by the Spirit as opposed to being led by the flesh).
III. This third kind of being led by the HS is what we find in Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18.
A. These are only two places in the NT epistles which speak of being led by the HS:
1. Romans 8:14 “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”
2. Galatians 5:18 “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.”
B. Let’s look at each of these verses in their context.
1. Here is Romans 8:12-15: So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery [to fall] back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
a. Paul is talking here about righteous living. Paul is talking about following the Spirit’s leading to do what God has commanded us to do in His word. When God refers here to leading us by His Spirit, He’s not referring to giving us new revelation or direction. He is referring to the fact that He has sent His Spirit into our hearts to move us to do what He has already commanded. And so He says, “Be led by the Spirit, not by your sinful desires.”
2. The same meaning of being led by the Spirit is found in Galatians 5:18: “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.”
a. Everyone is either under grace or under law. Christians are under grace. Everyone else is under law. That is, they still stand under the law of God, and the judgment of God (for their disobedience to the law) hangs over their heads. They haven’t yet come under grace and received the forgiveness of Christ.
(1) And yet at times believers begin to act like they are under law.
(2) But when they submit to the Spirit, doing deeds of righteousness, instead of doing the sinful deeds of the flesh, they show by that that they are under grace and not law.
(3) Once again, being led by the Spirit here means submitting to the Spirit’s guidance to avoid the deeds of the flesh and walk in the way of righteousness.
(4) It is the Holy Spirit who moves us to do what we know we should do. And when we submit to that, we are following the leading of the Holy Spirit.
(5) But these verses do not refer to what many Christians mean today when they talk about being led by the Spirit. It does not refer to being led by the Spirit in terms of being told specifically by the Spirit what to do.
3. In both passages, ‘being led by the Spirit’ is being contrasted with being led by your own fleshly impulses. It is referring to the battle between flesh and Spirit: that which is of the Spirit in us is in opposition with that which is of the flesh.
a. In both contexts Paul is saying, “Don’t follow the sinful desires of the flesh but follow what the Spirit wants you to do, follow what the Spirit is moving you to do.”
b. This is what God also says in Ezekiel 36:27: “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”
c. The only times that the NT epistles speak of being led by the Spirit, this is what it’s talking about.
C. Now these two verses don’t prove that God doesn’t at times guide us by putting a certain thought in our minds about what we should do. But I think they should give us pause about the way many Christians speak and act today re: being led by the HS.
1. The Bible just doesn’t instruct us to expect the HS to tell us what we’re supposed to do each day or what choices we should make in a given circumstance.
IV. Let me try to explain why I believe this business of God telling me this and leading me to do that is dangerous.
A. Obviously one of the greatest dangers in this is people hearing God tell them to do things that are contrary to His word.
1. As a pastor I have heard this a number of times from people who want to get out of a marriage.
2. I once heard a person justify deserting their marriage on the basis of being led by God to a number of passages that spoke of God delivering people from those who were evil.
3. This is a way that Satan frequently draws God’s people away from obedience, through these impulses that they rationalize or interpret as being from the Lord.
4. We have an amazing capacity to deceive ourselves, and to be blind, unwilling to face the truth.
5. We are so prone to find a way to do the things that we really want, even if it means blaming it on God by deluding ourselves into thinking that He is leading us into it.
6. But it can be a way of justifying our own desires, or erecting obstacles to the opposition that others might present.
B. Impulses might be temptations.
1. In one sense God rules over all of our thoughts, but that doesn’t mean all our thoughts are good. We need wisdom to know whether a thought is good or evil. An impulse might be the HS moving us to do what He wants us to do, or an impulse might be a temptation which we must resist.
2. Just because it’s possible that God could lead us through our thoughts doesn’t mean that we can just trust our thoughts.
3. A Christian friend once told me that in a dream he heard God tell him to kill someone that he was angry with. Now fortunately this person had the wisdom and discernment to recognize that this was not really from God. But quite a few murderers say that God told them to do it. This is the kind of danger involved in thinking that we hear the voice of God.
C. Impulses can give people false hopes.
1. How many horror stories have we all heard about dying people being told that God says they’re going to be healed, and then they die?
2. I knew of a Christian man who was dying and his family all suddenly had a sense that the Lord was going to heal him. And so they announced that to all their friends. And then the man died. What a bad testimony this is to the world! How it misleads! How it confuses!
3. How many people passed over into death focusing on being healed instead of focusing on being ready to meet the Lord.
D. Impulses can be used to mislead others.
1. Some people apply their impulses to others as if they’re prophetic.
2. People can easily lead others astray if they can convince them that the HS is leading them.
E. Impulses can be used to interpret Scripture.
1. I went to seminary to learn how to exegete Scripture. Exegesis is a literary terms which means figuring out what the author means by what he says.
2. In our day many Christians read the Bible as if it’s a magic book through which God gives us signs of what He wants us to learn. But the Bible is a glorious, God-inspired piece of literature which teaches us about God and what He has done and what He requires of us. And it needs to be studied and interpreted like any other piece of literature to try to figure out what God means.
F. In favor of impulses or signals interpreted as being sent from God, people can abandon the process of wise decision-making that God has given to us as His people.
1. I don’t mean that God cannot use impulses or circumstances as part of our decision-making process. But when receiving impulses or reading signals takes the place of wise and careful consideration, then there is great danger.
2. For instance, a woman in our church was sharing with me how difficult it is to know how she should be using her time: what things should she keep in her life and which things should she give up? And she was saying she wished that God would just tell her what she was supposed to do.
3. And all of us can identify with that, can’t we? There are a lot of dilemmas that we face. And it would be a lot easier if God would just tell us what He wanted us to do.
4. But God hasn’t told us everything He wants us to do. And it’s good that He hasn’t, because He’s teaching us to take responsibility for our own lives, to make decisions as His servants according to His wisdom. It can be a short cut, a cop-out.
5. He wants us to be engaged in the sometimes strenuous process of searching our hearts, evaluating our motivations, carefully considering the situation, asking how various options are going to affect others, etc.
G. Seeking the Lord’s direction in this way can get us focusing on the wrong thing.
1. We get all wrapped up in questions like how are we going to spend our time and what are we going to do. But this is not the kind of question God is primarily concerned with. He is concerned about the condition of our hearts. He is concerned about our affection for Christ.
2. Too many times we are saying, “Lord, lead me in this decision,” when we should be saying, “Lord, lead me in Your way of righteousness.”
3. The important thing is not whether we live here or there, or whether we have this job or that one. The important thing in life is that we love and seek Jesus. The important thing is that we appreciate all that He has done for us, that we trust Him to take good care of us, and that we serve Him with a willing, obedient attitude.
4. Even Christians can be totally wrapped up in what’s happening right here, right now in this world.
5. But God calls us to become focused on the things of Christ: things like all that He has done for us, things like faith, godliness, obedience, humility, joy, love.
6. And that is really my biggest concern with the led-by-the-Spirit approach: it can so easily become a distraction from Jesus.
V. Conclusion
A. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with having an impulse. There’s nothing wrong with having a sense that we ought to do something. God is sovereign over our minds and He puts thoughts and impulses upon our minds and hearts. (And He is certainly the One who providentially gives us the sense that some thought or idea or impulse is from Him – though He never guarantees that these senses are accurate, which is why they alone cannot be trusted as the sole basis for making a decision.) That is certainly one of the ways that He sometimes moves people to do certain things.
1. And yet there are dangers that go along with this.
2. So, we should take our impulses with a grain of salt. We should not be so certain that it is a message from the Lord. You don’t have to ignore the impulse, but you should evaluate it according to the Scripture and according to godly wisdom. You should ask, “Is this is a good thing? Is this a wise thing? Is this a Biblical thing?”
B. So does this mean that the Holy Spirit is not our guide and our leader? Not at all. The Bible tells us that He leads us. But let’s let Him lead us in the manner in which He says He will lead us. The Holy Spirit guides us into righteousness. He leads us to Christ. He leads us in the way that He has called us to go. He guides us into the way of love. He shows us the path of truth.
1. And even when it comes to specific guidance, there is no denying the fact that the Holy Spirit provides guidance for believers. The question is just how He does it.
2. And you don’t have to fret. God is sovereign. If God wants you to do something, He has the ability to let you know.
C. Now some brothers and sisters in Christ would disagree with some of what I’ve said this morning. Some might point to the HS leading Jesus into the wilderness or speaking to Paul in a dream telling him to cross over into Greece. But those are prophetic.
1. I believe the Bible indicates that prophecy has ceased. And that’s the basic position of the PCA.
2. I’ve put papers explaining why I believe this in the back in case you’d like to read them.
3. One person who disagrees is Professor Wayne Grudem, and those who have adopted his position of two levels of prophecy (like the Sovereign Grace churches).
a. Dr. Grudem redefines NT prophecy as drastically different than OT prophecy, and claims that NT prophecy continues today.
4. I disagree with this, and one of the papers in the back I wrote to explain why.
5. But on the issue of whether prophecy has ceased or not, I actually count those who accept Grudem’s thesis on the PCA’s side. This is because like the PCA they believe that what we consider to be prophecy has ceased, though they don’t believe that what they think is (NT) prophecy has not ceased.