Why we need a series on the Holy Spirit?
I. Introduction to the Message
“Honor the Holy Spirit!” was Evan Roberts’ constant cry from pulpit after pulpit in the Welsh revival of 1904. honoring the Holy Spirit has, I believe, been the secret of every revival movement in Christendom from the start, whether or not the actual words have been used. Believers honor the Holy Spirit when they give him his way in their lives and when his ministry of exalting Christ and convincing of sin, sinking them ever lower and raising Christ even higher in their estimate, goes on unhindered and unquenched. The records of all fruitful times in the church’s past confirm this.
JI Packer, Keeping in Step With the Spirit., p. 237.
The most obvious point has been repeated in a number of ways throughout, namely, the absolutely crucial role the Spirit plays in Paul’s Christian experience and therefore in his understanding of the gospel. In the final analysis, there is no aspect of his theology – at least what I fundamental to his theology – in which the Spirit does not play a leading role. To be sure, the Spirit is not the center for Paul – Christ is, ever and always – but the Spirit stands very close to the center, as the crucial ingredient of all genuinely Christian life and experience. For this reason, the Spirit arguably must play a much more vital role in our rethinking Paul’s theology than tends now to be the case.
Gordon Fee, GEP. P. 897
A vital doctrine!
Why have a series on the Holy Spirit?
HE IS GOD AND WE MUST WORSHIP HIM
HE IS GOOD, WE MUST ENJOY HIM.
II. HE is God – We must worship Him.
A. He is God the third person
1. There is One God
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (ESV)
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord
our God, the Lord is one. 5
You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
there!
1 Timothy 2:5 (ESV)
5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus,
2. Third Person
Acts 5:3-4 (ESV)
3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to
lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds
of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your
own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you
have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to
God.”
2 Corinthians 3:17 (ESV)
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is freedom.
1 Corinthians 12:4-6 (ESV)
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;
5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord;
6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God
who empowers them all in everyone.
2 Corinthians 13:14 (ESV)
14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
1 Peter 1:2 (ESV)
2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the
sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and
for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
Jude 20-21 (ESV)
20 But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith;
pray in the Holy Spirit; 21 keep yourselves in the love
of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads
to eternal life.
3. A Person Not a Force
John 16:13-14 (ESV)
13 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. 14 He will glorify me, for he will
take what is mine and declare it to you.
Ephesians 4:30 (ESV)
30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you
were sealed for the day of redemption.
B. Since the Holy Spirit is God we must worship Him as God!
John 16:14 (ESV)
He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
A genuine recapturing of the Pauline perspective will cause the church to be more vitally Trinitarian, not only in its theology, but in its life and spirituality as well. This will mean not the exaltation of the Sprit, but the exaltation of God; and it will mean not focus on the Spirit as such, but on the Son, crucified and risen, Savior and Lord of all. Ethical life will be neither narrowly, individualistically conceived nor legalistically expressed, but will joyously communal and decidedly over against the world’s present trinity of relativism, secularism, and materialism, with their thoroughly dehumanizing effects. And the proper Trinitarian aim of such ethics will be the Pauline one – to the glory of God, through being conformed to the image of the Son, by the empowering of the Spirit.
Gordon Fee, GEP, p. 902.
We worship God the Holy Spirit by honoring His place in our lives.
Not a force!
A person.
Not an angel.
God!
Not Binitarians!
We Worship a Triune God.
One God in three persons!
Are you worshipping the third person of the trinity by honoring His place in your life?
III. He is Good (We must enjoy the Holy Spirit’s role in our lives.)
The work of the Holy Spirit is to manifest the active presence of God in the world, and especially in the church. ……..
In the Old Testament, the presence of God was many times manifest in the glory of God and in the theophanies, and in the gospels Jesus himself manifested the presence of God among men. But after Jesus ascended into heaven, and continuing through the entire church age, the Holy Spirit is now the primary manifestation of he presence of he Trinity among us. He is the one who is most prominently present with us now.
Wayne Grudem, ST, p 634.
God among us!
John 16:7 (ESV)
7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that
I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I
go, I will send him to you.
God present among us.
The Spirit marked off God’s people corporately and individually as God’s temple, the place of his personal dwelling on earth. Brought together here in terms of fulfillment are: a) the presence motif itself, inherent to the OT tabernacle and temple; b) the Presence understood in terms of he Spirit of the Lord; and c) the promised new covenant of the Spirit from Jeremiah and Ezekiel, wherein the Spirit would indwell God’s people and cause them to live and to follow in his ways. Paul not only sees these themes as fulfilled by the gift of the Spirit, but also understands the Spirit as God’s personal presence. The best accounts for Paul’s general reluctance to refer to the Spirit with impersonal images; to the contrary, he regularly refers to the Spirit’s activity with verbs of personal action, used elsewhere of God and Christ. The spirit is thus the “Holy Spirit of God” and “the Spirit of Jesus Christ” – the way God is currently present with and among his people.
Gordon Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, p 898.
A. The many key roles.
1. The Temple Analogy
1 Corinthians 3:16 (ESV)
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit
dwells in you?
1 Peter 2:4-10 (ESV)
4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the
sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living
stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to
offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6
For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a
cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put
to shame.” 7 So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who
do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the
cornerstone,” 8 and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who
called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you
were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received
mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Regeneration (Stone Made Alive)
Baptism (Stone Transformed)
Baptism Explained
Third Wave and Pentecostal Views
Sanctification (Stone Refined)
Character
Doctrine of Sanctification
Equipping (Stone Positioned)
Gifts
Communion (Stone Relating)
Illumination
Manifestation (Stone Containing)
The Purpose of the Building – First!
B. The importance of these roles.
Psalm 127:1 (ESV)
1 Unless the Lord
builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the
Lord watches over the city, the
watchman stays awake in vain.
Neglect of any of these roles lessens the ability of the church to be the Temple!
Can relate many errors – commission or omission - to a faulty understanding and practice of the ministry of the Spirit.
“The Christian life in all it aspects – intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness – is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it. So apart form him, not only will there be no lively believers and no lively congregations, there will be no believers and no congregations at all. But in fact the church continues to live and grow, for the Spirit’s ministry has not failed, nor ever will, with the passage of time.”
JI Packer, Keeping in Step with the Spirit, p.9.
C. Understating His roles
1. “One thing God can not do – contradict a man’s will” – Regeneration.
Misunderstanding regeneration.
Titus 3:5 (ESV)
5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness,
but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of
the Holy Spirit,
Not a choice but a miracle.
I did not choose God but he chose me.
He is good, I’m not!
2. “No smoking, no dancing, …” – striving.
Romans 14:17 (ESV)
17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking
but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Galatians 5:16 (ESV)
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the
desires of the flesh.
3. “If you do ..xyz…. your church will grow” – vs. equipping etc.
1 Corinthians 3:6,7 (ESV)
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who
gives the growth.
4. Hearing God is a matter of merely using your mind….
1 Corinthians 2:12-16 (ESV)
12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit
who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but
taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are
spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the
Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand
them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual
person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16
“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we
have the mind of Christ.
5. We want order around here…. Vs. manifestation.
David dancing,
Bar-jesus going blind.
Jesus delivering from demonisation.
Blind Bartimaeus.
The triumphal entry.
Order yes! Chaos , no!
This order is not stagnancy or even normalcy, it is merely structured around Jesus Christ and his structures for his church – purposes and procedures, within that – freedom and spontaneity and the dynamic leading of the Holy Spirit.
How we do worship song selection.
How we do Caregroup.
How we do Sunday messages.
How we do Sundays.
D. Overstating His role
1. “As the Spirit moves me” vs. responsibility. – “Let Go and Let God”
Romans 8:12-14 (ESV)
12 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.
Romans 13:14 (ESV)
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the
flesh, to gratify its desires.
Active seeking to walk with the Spirit!
Galatians 5:25 (ESV)
25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
2. “Gotta get that second experience” – vs. immediacy of His Spirit, progressive nature.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old
has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Ephesians 5:18 (ESV)
18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be
filled with the Spirit,
Sinless perfection.
Keswick Movement
3. “As God wills – waiting to discern the Spirit” – vs. responsibility.
Parable of the talents.
Activity, risk, not selfishness or laziness.
We are called to invest the talents.
Revealed will clear.
Local church life!
Look at work of the Spirit – glorify Jesus – build the church!!!!!!!
One anothers! Plenty busy!
Seeking his will is wise. Only be careful.
Experiencing God has it’s limits.
E. Applications
Study!
Seek!
Share!
CG context
Friends
Sunday serving!
IV. Conclusion
A. Full hearts
Thanksgiving
Awe
Rejoicing!
The expectation of the ages!
Moses wish fulfilled!
B. Faith
Expectancy!
God with us!
Active!
Manifold!
His presence with us!
C. Fruit
His work will be done!
The house, the temple will be built!
He will be glorified!
Exodus 33:15-16 (ESV)
15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do
not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have
found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us,
so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the
face of the earth?”