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Show Notes by Jim Kerwin for Kernels of Wheat Podcast
Episode 020 – Do You Have Indoor Plumbing?
Is this your experience of the Christian life, or do you have indoor plumbing?
Review of last week’s episode, What We Don’t Know About the ‘Anointing,‘ the second installment in our study of 1 John 2:18-29.
Abiding
- What is the significance of what we learned about ‘the anointing’ last week?
- Do you have indoor plumbing?
- Most Christians don’t have indoor plumbing, and find it hard to believe or even conceive that other people do!
- Living water (John 4:1-42)
- What does “living” mean?
- The water becomes a “well springing up to eternal life” (v. 14)
- An insignificant fact?
- Left her waterpot (v. 28) — why is this small fact important?
- (Side note: Another example of an important fact — Isaiah 6:1. See Leper in the Throne Room for an explanation.)
- What is our normal thought-orientation about our interaction with God?
- From the top down
- Filling a bucket – this is the Old Covenant concept – God is up there / out there, and must be invoked, prayed or praised down.
- Filling a cistern (e.g., Jeremiah 2:13)
- One of our greatest problems – putting a veneer of New Covenant language on and Old Covenant experience.
- How does a well fill? – from the bottom up, from the inside out. – This is the New Covenant concept – God is within
- John 14:17 – “He [the Holy Spirit] dwells [abides] with you, but shall be in you.”
- What gets born again in the New Birth?
- The human spirit
- Why – it’s where God dwells.
- Coming of the Holy Spirit within restores the “indoor plumbing” of constant fellowship with God, “living water” flowing within.
- Do you have indoor plumbing? Are you through with your bucket and cistern?
- Now do you see why it’s unscriptural to “pray down the anointing”?
- The Anointing isn’t an it; He’s a person, the blessed, indwelling, abiding Holy Spirit, not some spiritual goo or blob of blessing to be “prayed down.”
- “He will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:13)
- You abide in Him, and He abides in you.
How the Apostle John Uses the Word Abiding
- John’s use of the noun mone (abiding place, dwelling) in John 14:2, 23
- Recall our discussion of this from Kernels of Wheat Episode 13 – The Love Meter.
- John’s use of of the verb meno (abide, remain, continue, dwell, stay, etc.)
- Uses it 50% more than all of the other NT writers combined
- Recall John’s central theme – fellowship with the Godhead (1 John 1)
- John = the Apostle of the inner and intimate life
- John’s initial use of meno — John 1:32-39
- The Holy Spirit descending and abiding on Jesus – vv. 32, 33
- John’s first question to Jesus — “Where do You abide?” — vv. 38, 39
- Meno as the operative verb in John 15 – the Vine passage
- Meno in 1 John 2:20, 27, in the flow of what has already appeared in the epistle
- v. 6 – a Christian is someone who says that s/he abides in God and God abides in him or her.
- v. 9 – abiding in the light
- v. 24 – let that therefore abide in you… (3 x)
- v. 27 – anointing, the chrisma abides in you; abide in Him
- The word Christian: From the same chri– root we discussed in the last study.
- v. 28 – command – abide in Him
Consistent with Paul’s Understanding and Teaching
- 2 Corinthians 1:21—Now He who establishes us with you in the Anointed One and anointed us is God…
- How do you get your “anointing”? By being in and abiding in God’s only Anointed One.
- Colossians 1:24-29:
- v. 27 — The mystery of the Gospel — The Anointed One in you, the hope of Glory!
- v. 28 — To present every man complete in the Anointed One.
Next Session: Antichrist
First anointing, then abiding, and next week antichrist. How do they all tie together?
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More teaching by Jim Kerwin and others can be found on the Finest of the Wheat website.
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