"All About The Holy Spirit " Series

Pastor Allan Kircher

Acts 10:36-43

“All about the Holy Spirit”

Acts series: God’s Vision and Power for Shell Point Baptist.

Introduction:

As we continue in the Book or Acts let’s refresh our memory:

The church had been founded on the Day of Pentecost.

• It had exploded in Jerusalem,

• then it exploded all throughout Judea and Samaria,

• People were being saved everywhere along the way.

• Great revivals were breaking out, particularly in Samaria under the ministry of Philip and, as well, Peter and John and the other apostles.

• Peter was moving around.

The strictness of the Jewish Law was losing its hold on Peter:

His walls were coming down..His prejudices of his upbringing crumbling one by one.

• He was the preacher to the unsaved.

• He was also the teacher to the saints.

• He was available to God, and he moved about from place to place.

In Chapter 9, he healed Aeneas/8 yr paralytic

God is moving mightily in his life..he keeps moving.

On his knees praying he Raised Dorcas from the dead.

Peter’s walls are tumbling slowly and steadily…..

It’s all about the Holy Spirit…He’s living for the glory of God.

We finish chapter 9 with Peter staying at Simon the tanner’s house.

No self-respecting Jew would have anything to do with such a man.

But the strictness of the Jewish Law was losing its hold on Peter

• Peter’s prejudices/being melted down by our Lord.

• The Jail cell/Jewish traditions/training/legalism/prejudice is crumbling…..

There's one key left in Peter's hand that hasn't yet been put in a door and turned, and that's the...the key that opens the church to include the Gentiles.

And so Peter is about to unlock that last door, and that's gonna be a tough key for Peter to turn,

• It’s a key only the Holy Spirit can provide.

• Peter preaches his sermon to Cornelius/family/friends.

• God has prepared Peter through the HS.

Now I want us to look at this simple straight-forward message.

I can't improve upon it, I can't embellish it, I want only to make it clear so that you understand what the gospel of the resurrection is

Now let’s look at our text through the eyes of the visual Bible.

Acts 10:1-47

The Holy Spirit Is Free to Do as He Pleases

The Holy Spirit is free to come and to go whenever and however he pleases.

• He is free/give gifts/withhold gifts,

• To regenerate/convict and baptize and seal and fill

• And comfort and counsel whenever he wills according to his own infinite wisdom.

• He is not bound to make any of our programs work.

• He is not constrained to do what we think he should do when we think he should do it.

• He is God. And he is free.

Hebrews 2:4 says that when the gospel came to those people, God "bore witness with signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy spirit distributed according to his own will."

According to his own will" means that the Spirit is free and sovereign in the way he gives his gifts and works his miracles.

1 Corinthians 12:11 says the same thing. "All these [gifts] are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills."

As he wills, not necessarily as we will. He is free.

Jesus put it in a picture for us.

He compares the freedom of the Spirit/freedom of the wind.

In John 3:8 he says, "The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

The Holy Spirit is as free as the wind.

• You can't see him. You can't control him.

• Suddenly he is around you and in you.

• You did not make him come any more/you can rule the wind.

• He is free.

When in your soul, evil desire begins to plead the argument of sin

• Was there another voice/your soul pleading for noble things.

• Wasn’t there a voice, low but clear and insistent speaking to you of the best thing to do.

• Pleading, pleading like a skillful advocate in front of a judge.

• “Don’t do it!”

Do you remember that in your soul?

Who was it? I’ll tell you who it was. It was the blessed Paraclete.

It was the Holy Spirit. He was pleading the truth and making reply to every argument of sin.

Where would I have been, where would you have been, but for the blessed Holy Spirit?

• If, at our first foolish frolicking of sin

• If, as soon as we were seduced in our hearts by desire.