Great Mysteries of the Faith:
Understanding the Holy Spirit
1 Corinthians 2:1-16
Max Lucado once told a story in one of his books about a lady who had a small house on the seashore of Ireland at the turn of the century. The lady was actually quite wealthy, but she was also quite frugal. The people of the village were very surprised to hear that she was one of the first to decide to have electricity in her home. Several weeks after installation, a meter reader appeared at her door. He asked her if her electricity was working well, and she assured him it was. The meter reader replied, “I’m wondering if you could explain something to me then. Your meter shows scarcely any usage. Are you using your power?” “Certainly,” she answered. “Each evening when the sun sets, I turn on my lights just long enough to light my candles. Then, I turn them off.”
This woman had it all wrong. She had tapped into the power source, but she had refused to change and use it to its fullest advantages. She was hooked up and ready to go, but her life remained unaltered. I think we make a similar mistake in our lives though. We come to God as Christians and get tapped into an unlimited power source, but our lives only become slightly altered. Instead of letting the Holy Spirit transform our lives into what God intends them to be, we settle for a flip of the switch here and there and live the rest of our lives in the shadows. We have the power to turn on the lights, but we are afraid to really change.
Have any of you ever been there? You know that there is more out there for you – more power, more blessings, and more of God – but you just settle for what I like to call the “warm fuzzies” of the Christian life. When I look at the lives of the apostles in the Bible, I see regular, ordinary people like you and me that were transformed into victorious and bold miracle workers for the cause of the gospel. What do they have that we don’t? Nothing – they just turned the lights on and let them burn.
The apostles knew one thing that we have a hard time understanding sometimes. God is God and I am not. God holds the power and ability to do great and miraculous things and I only have the power to do what is humanly possible. Therefore, the disciples put themselves to the side and relied on the power of God to do the work by tapping into all the riches of the Holy Spirit that was available to them. Why don’t we do that today? I think it is for a few reasons and the biggest of them is this. We really don’t understand the Holy Spirit so we are afraid of completely turning our lives over to His power. Do you agree with that this morning? After all, who is mentioned last when we go through the Trinity? And, even though all Three are equally God, which one do you know the least about? And which one brings about the most controversy in our churches today so we tend to shy away from Him? All three are the Holy Spirit. This morning, as we continue our series on the great mysteries of the faith, I want to unravel some of the mystery surrounding the Holy Spirit. How else are we going to trust Him enough to allow Him to lead every aspect of our lives? I want you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 2:1-16 as we delve into this subject this morning.
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom but on God’s power. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him” but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truth in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment: For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
I know that was a mouth full of Scripture this morning, but it is all imperative if we are to ever understand the complexities of the Holy Spirit. From this Scripture and others, we will determine who the Spirit is, what the Spirit does, and how to give control back to the Spirit. Before we do, let’s look to the Lord in prayer.
Who is the Holy Spirit?
There are two problems that come up when we ask the question. The first is that there are so many words and symbols used to describe the Spirit. After all, you can find the Spirit referred to as wind, breath, a dove, fire, water, oil, and the like. Although these can be confusing, they are meant to be ways to explain what the Spirit is like to our simple human minds. Remember back in Exodus when Moses asked to see God’s glory. What is the response of God? Basically, he told Moses he would have to look on His backside because He was too much for Moses to handle. Basically, Moses would die, because God’s glory is too much for us to comprehend. After all, Moses just saw a glimpse of God and his whole face glowed and his appearance was changed forever. The same is true with the Spirit. God cannot possibly explain all about himself or His Spirit to our fragile little minds, so he gives us glimpses of what His Spirit is like by comparing Him to things we understand. He is like the wind because He has no material shape or form and cannot be seen, yet we know it is there because we see and feel the effects of it as it blows by us. He is like water because He is our great need to live a full and healthy life. He is like fire because He can cause us to burn and put off a light that others can clearly see. These metaphors give us a bit of understanding about a person that is beyond complete explanation.
The second problem that comes with this question is the way we interpret the word spirit nowadays. And, if you look back to the King James, it becomes even more confusing because it constantly refers to the Holy Ghost. Be honest with me this morning. What images are conjured up in your head when you hear the word ‘ghost’? How many of you are picturing Casper or a kid with a white sheet as I speak? This was not the original meaning of the term ghost however. Whichever term you use, Ghost or Spirit, are both related to the terms for breath, breathing, breeze, or wind. For the ancients who were alive when this was written, breath meant life. When a person stopped breathing, he died. Wind stood for power and strength. When they sought a term for something powerful and invisible and beyond what they could control or explain, they often used this term which we call spirit or ghost. Thus again, the Holy Spirit is not a spook – He is something beyond our understanding. Thus, we must dispel the notion that the Holy Spirit is an ‘it’. Just because He is invisible does not mean that He is not a person. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, so that makes Him just as much a person as God the Father and Jesus Christ. A.W. Tozer says it best in his book “The Counselor”. “Spell this out in capital letters: THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A PERSON. He is not enthusiasm. He is not courage. He is not energy. He is not the personification of all good qualities, like Jack Frost is the personification of cold weather. Actually, the Holy Spirit is not the personification of anything. He has individuality. He is one being and not another. He has will and intelligence. He has hearing. He has knowledge and sympathy and ability to love and see and think. He can hear, speak, desire, grieve, and rejoice. He is a person!” We need to remember that. He is a person, and yet He is God. That is good news, and it should help you relate to Him better.
What does the Holy Spirit do?
Let’s take a look back to our Scripture for this morning to see what we can uncover for this question. First of all, the Spirit is the one that empowers us especially when it comes to sharing our testimony. I want to read to you Paul’s explanation of himself in verses 1-5. “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom but on God’s power.” Can anyone relate to this? Does witnessing cause weakness and fear and cause you to tremble? Do you feel at a loss for words when it comes to sharing the gospel? Good – Paul felt the same way, but he ended up being one of the most successful preachers and missionaries of all time. How did this happen? He let his faith rest on God’s power and let God do all the work. This was a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, and that power is still available today through the Holy Spirit because one of His main jobs is to supply us with power.
The second thing the Spirit does is help to bring us to Christian maturity. Christian maturity is, according to Paul in verse 16, having the mind of Christ. How do we attain this? We do not attain the mind of Christ by gaining wisdom from the rulers and people of this world. Their wisdom, according to our Scripture, comes to nothing. We gain this secret and hidden wisdom because the Spirit of God reveals it to those who God has prepared and who love God. Have you ever been reading the Bible before and something pops out that you never noticed before? That is the Holy Spirit revealing secret wisdom to you, and that is helping you along the road of Christian maturity. You cannot gain this insight apart from having the Spirit of God, because people without the Spirit cannot even understand the wisdom of the Spirit.
The Spirit has several other functions that are not mentioned in this Scripture as well. In John 16, we are told that the Spirit is the one that convicts us of sin. In 1 Corinthians 12, we are told that the spiritual gifts are given from the same Spirit which is the Holy Spirit. Other places in the Scripture talk about Him being our guide, counselor, comforter, and giver of all good things. He is all of these and more. The thing that we must remember is this. There are many things that the Spirit can do, but everything He does is for the purpose of bringing people to the Father. Everything He does is to show people that God is real, God loves you, and that God wants to save you. Therefore, the Holy Spirit can manifest himself in a number of different ways. It can be through laughter. It can be through languages that not everyone understands. It can be through conviction. It can be through revealing Himself more in the world. But, the work of the Spirit will always lead to non-believers coming to Christ or believers being strengthened in their faith. If these things do not happen, it is not the Holy Spirit who is working.
How do we give control back to the Spirit?
Carl Bates, a Southern Baptist leader once said, “We are so well manned and equipped in our churches that the Holy Spirit could leave and it would be two years before we realized He was gone.” I think he might be on to something. As soon as things start going good, don’t we often think we have got things under control? Don’t we start to rely on our own wisdom and strength to make things work? After all, when the Spirit is around, people come to Christ and mature believer are produced. Usually, this happens in record numbers as a result of the Spirit of God working in ways that is beyond our power as humans. Is that happening in your everyday life?
We need to turn the control of our lives and our church back over to the Holy Spirit. After all, He is the power source. He is the fire that ignites our lives. He is the water that sustains and gives us life. He is the oil that brings healing. He is the dove that brings peace to our lives. How do we do this? The first thing we need to do is to give our lives completely to God either for the first time or to renew our commitment. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to completely fill us because a life without the Spirit cannot understand what the Spirit is doing. Secondly, we need to make ourselves available to Him. We need to be willing to step out in faith and do things that we may not normally be comfortable doing. After all, if we always stay in our comfort zones and areas of strength, we will always rely on our own power and will never need the power of the Holy Spirit. Finally, we need to ask the Lord to give us passion. Passion for His Word. Passion for His Prescence. Passion for the lost. Passion that causes us to catch fire for God. Remember, unless the eye catches fire, God will not be seen. Unless the ear catches fire, God will not be heard. Unless the tongue catches fire, God will not be named. Unless the heart catches fire, God will not be loved. Unless the mind catches fire, God will not be known. “We need to,” as J.B. Phillips said, “Open our personality to the living Spirit even though it involves the risk of us being considerable shaken.” You have lived in the mundane for long enough. Open your heart to the person of the Holy Spirit who wishes to use you to bring the lost to Christ and believers to maturity. And, in the process, He will transform your life into one of power and victory. Let’s pray.
