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Show Notes by Jim Kerwin for Kernels of Wheat Podcast
Episode 020 – 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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