Scripture: Nehemiah 9:20; John 14:12-17
Theme: Holy Spirit - Master Teacher
This sermon is dedicated to looking at the Holy Spirit as our Teacher – a. He will teach us about Jesus and the WORD b. He will reveal Himself to us Directly c. He will help us communicate with others
INTRO:
Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
I want to talk to you this morning about the Holy Spirit. In particular, the Holy Spirit as being a Teacher in your life.
Before we get into that into that a little deeper there are a couple of primary truths that I want to share with you and then we will look at three ways that the Holy Spirit desires to be our Personal Teacher/Trainer.
1. The Trinity has appointed the Holy Spirit to be Our Teacher
From the very beginning the Trinity has revealed itself to all of Creation as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
God the Father has revealed Himself in a number of ways. Some of those ways are; the Lord God Almighty, the Lord God Most High, Jehovah Jireh (the Lord my Provider), Jehovah Rapha (the Lord my Healer), Jehovah Sabaoth (the Lord my Protector) and of course as Abba (Father).
God the Son (Jesus) has revealed Himself in a number of ways. Some of those ways are: the Prince of Peace, the Alpha and the Omega, the Good Shepherd, the True Vine, the Messiah, the Son of Man, and the Way, the Truth and the Life. We also know the Son of God as the Resurrection and as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Those are some of the names that most of us know when it comes to the God the Father and to God the Son. But what do we know of God the Holy Spirit?
Well, we know that the Holy Spirit has revealed Himself in a number of different ways as well. Some of those ways are; Counselor, Comforter, the Power of the Most High, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Conviction, the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Grace and Holiness. And we can add to those names that of Teacher, Guide and Trainer.
2. Secondly, we know that not only has the Holy Spirit been appointed to be our Teacher but if we will allow Him, He will teach each and every one of us as individuals and as a corporate body of Christ. If we surrender ourselves to His Person, His Power and His Presence the Holy Spirit will teach us how to live an Abundant Life, a Life Infused with Power and a Life of Victory and Oneness.
It has never been God’s plan for us to stumble around in the dark. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not interested in us living a life of being some type of mindless and thoughtless human beings. They have never wanted us to be some type of ignorant robots blindly obeying Them and groveling out an existence here on this earth.
It has never been God’s will to keep us out of the loop. He is not pleased for us to live a life of incompetence and stupidity. That is not the will or the plan of God for any human being. God’s plan is just the opposite.
It is our privilege as Born Again Disciples to be “taught by God Himself through the Person, Power and Presence of His Holy Spirit.
Now, just for a moment allow that to sink into your heart, mind and soul.
It is our privilege as Born Again Disciples to be “taught by God Himself through the Person, Power and Presence of His Holy Spirit”.
Some people have mistakenly fallen into the same trap that Satan laid out for Adam and Eve way back in the Garden. They believe that God wants us to stay unaware. They believe that God wants us to be simpletons. And they believe that God wants us to be uneducated and uninformed. But none of those things are true.
What is true is that God Himself through His Holy Spirit wants to teach us. He wants us to grow and mature. He wants us to experience life to its fullness. He wants to reveal Himself to us in all manner of ways including His Word, direct knowledge, dreams, visions and other revelations. And the LORD wants us to experience a life filled with truth, underlined with truth and based on truth.
In fact, we shall never really know the truth until we are a student of the Holy Spirit. The only way for us to really experience what Jesus calls the Abundant Life here on this earth and on the New Heaven and Earth to come is to be a student of the Holy Spirit. There is no other way.
No amount of Earthly wisdom, no matter how lofty it is can ever replace or supersede the wisdom, knowledge, insight, revelation and understanding that come directly to a person through the Holy Spirit. This is exactly what King Solomon writes about over and over again in both his Proverbs and in the book of Ecclesiastes. He wants us to understand that while there is a limit to earthly wisdom there is not ceiling on heavenly wisdom.
In saying that, however, we are not dismissing in any regard the importance of understanding things like science, mathematics, medicine, logic and language. We are not dismissing the importance of understanding how to fix a car, construct a house, and cook a great meal or how to be a good parent. We are not dismissing the importance of knowing how to paint, how to balance your budget, how to wash your clothes or how to sing a song.
We desperately need people to possess all kinds of earthly knowledge, wisdom and understanding. Our way of life on this present earth depends on it. We need people who have gained the wisdom, the knowledge and the skill to be doctors, farmers, engineers and computer operators. We need people who know how to build roads, sew materials, fix broken bones and give sound advice.
God wants that for all of us. He wants that for His world. It is how He designed us as humans. He gives people special skills and talents and He wants us to excel in them. This is the way He created things from the very beginning.
Along with all that earthly knowledge the LORD created us to be taught by Him through the Person, Power and Presence of His Holy Spirit. Just as the LORD breathed New Life in Us at the time of our Salvation, He wants to teach us how to live that New Life. We will never really know all that we need to know unless we become a student of the Holy Spirit.
No amount of human or earth based knowledge will be sufficient for us to be able to live the Abundant life here and beyond. No matter how good our earthly teachers were and are and no matter what degrees or earthly knowledge we have accumulated it still is never going to be enough for us to live a life that goes beyond this life.
You can be the best brain scientist, the most knowledgeable engineer or the best carpenter in the world and miss out on living the Abundant Life Jesus promised for us to live here on this earth and on the New Heaven and New Earth someday. As Jesus said in Matthew 26:16
“What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
This is even truer for those who have studied to be prepared for ministry. It is possible to know all kinds of Biblical facts, be able to speak both Hebrew and Greek and still be ignorant of the ways of the Holy Spirit. Too often we are impressed with degrees and with the ability to hear a person who speaks well than we are to be led by someone who is a committed disciple of the Holy Spirit.
This morning, if we want to experience everything God has for us, everything that Jesus died for us to be able to experience then we must sit at the feet of the Holy Spirit. We must allow the Holy Spirit to be our Teacher/Guide/Trainer.
The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit will teach us/guide us “into all the truth”. That does not mean however, that the Holy Spirit will suddenly dump all that wisdom, knowledge, insight and revelation into our hearts, minds and soul in a second. That is not the way the Holy Spirit works. He will teach us “bit by bit”, step by step and generation to generation.
So, the Trinity has told us these two important truths:
+That the Holy Spirit has been appointed to be Our Life Teacher
+The the Holy Spirit desires to share with Us All Truth
So, what exactly what does the Holy Spirit want us to learn? What are the areas in which He wants to Guide Us and what areas in our lives does He want to train us?
1. He wants us to learn about Jesus and the Importance of the Word of God
If we allow Him, the Holy Spirit will bring to our heart, mind and soul the teachings and the words of Jesus exactly when we need them. There is no one who magnifies Jesus more than the Holy Spirit. We will never fully understand Jesus, nor see His glory in our lives without the Person, Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Now, of course there is a major prerequisite in all of this. It is one sadly many people have failed to take into consideration and make a reality in their lives.
Many people believe that they can live an Abundant Life here on this earth and be ready to live on the New Heavens and New Earth and still remain illiterate to the Word of God. That is to say, they don’t take time to read God’s Word, study God’s Word or Meditate on God’s Word.
Over and over again the Bible clearly teaches us the importance of reading, studying and mediating on God’s Word. One of the greatest chapters in the Bible is found in Psalm 119. Listen to some of its words:
“Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day long. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation.” – verses 97-99
“Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.” – verse 105
“The unfolding of your words give light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” – verse 130
All of those verses and hundreds of others show us how important it is for us to read, study, meditate and live in our Bibles.
In Luke chapter four we read the story about the 40 days of temptation that Jesus endured in the wilderness. It is an amazing story. It is a story of testing and struggle but it is also a story of grace and victory.
What we may not remember though is that it was the Holy Spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness and into a time of testing. And we may not remember that it was the words inspired by the Holy Spirit that enabled Jesus to defeat Satan.
Three different times Jesus answered Satan’s temptation with words that had been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Three different times Jesus found victory through using God’s Word which of course has been inspired through the Holy Spirit.
In this simple story Jesus not only shows us how to be victorious over temptation and sin but He shows us how important it is to read, to understand and to apply Scripture into our lives. Jesus relied on Scripture to defeat Satan. Jesus relied on Scripture that had been inspired through the Person, Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit.
One of the greatest things we can experience in this life is to be able to listen firsthand to someone who has written a book that we have enjoyed. I remember years ago being able to listen to Richard Foster teach on a book that he had written. I had read the book. I had studied the book but being able to hear Richard in person talk about the book opened up whole new areas of insight and revelation. I learned more from hearing him speak about his book then I had just by reading his book.
There is no greater teacher of the Word of God than the Author of the Word of God. That Author of course is the Holy Spirit.
Listen to Jesus’ words:
"These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things I said to you.” - John 14:26
Listen to the words of St. Peter
"First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." (1 Peter 1:20-21)
The fact is the Author of the Bible we hold in our hands and are given the privilege to read each day is the Person, Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit. The best thing we can do each day is before we open the Word is to ask the Author of the Word to speak to us, to reveal to us what He has written.
There are things in the Bible that we will never be able to understand without the help of the Holy Spirit.
There are things in the Bible that can help us but we will never receive that help unless we read the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal those things to us.
The Apostle Paul made this very clear
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him – these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also not one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 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. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.” – 1 Corinthians 2:9-13
The Apostle Paul goes on to tell us that some people never received the truth of Scripture not because they didn’t read it but because they did not allow the Holy Spirit to reveal it to them. They never asked the Holy Spirit to teach them or to reveal to them the truths of His Word.
“But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” – 1 Corinthians 2:14
You and I are human beings created in the image of God. We have the ability to understand a great many things. We can be wise in a number of things.
But when it comes to spiritual things, things like real truth, things like how to really live, how to be prepared for eternity and how to understand the Bible, it takes more than human wisdom and knowledge. It takes the Person, Power and Presence of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives teaching us, guiding us and training us.
2. Secondly, the Holy Spirit wants to speak directly to us – He wants us to learn how to listen to His Voice
One of the best ways to know God’s will of course is to read our Bibles. But there is also another way. It is the way that God has used since the time of Adam and Eve. It is the way that God used with Moses, with King David, with Elijah, Isaiah and Daniel. It is the way that God used with Peter, Paul, Timothy and John.
We see the Holy Spirit speaking to each of them in many different ways and venues.
Many people say that all the answers for life are in the Bible. In truth, all the answers for life are in the Author of the Bible.
We do not say, “Father, Son and Holy Bible”.
We do say, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
If you were a 1st century Christian there was no Bible aside from some parts of the Old Testament. There were no printing presses. The people of the 1st century did what people had done for thousands of years – they did their best to hear God’s Word and when at all possible they memorized God’s Word.
Abraham did not have a Bible. Moses did not have a Bible. King David had the Torah but none of the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah or Ezekiel.
In fact, the Bible as we have it today wasn’t fully ratified until the 5th century. And it wasn’t until the 1500’s that the printing press was invented that enabled people to own a copy of the Bible for themselves.
Since then of course we have really emphasized the reading of God’s Word which is proper. But at the same time until the middle of the 1500’s people did their best to memorize sections of the Bible and to rely on the direct leading of the Holy Spirit. They had to be open to the Holy Spirit teaching them and speaking to them through their heart, mind and soul.
This is what Moses, King David, Elisha and Daniel did. They did their best to hear God’s Word but they also did their best to memorize scripture. And they communicated with God’s Holy Spirit directly. They opened up their hearts, minds and souls to hear and respond to God’s Holy Spirit.
This is what St. Paul did. Most of his writings pre-date the finished works of the Gospels. We know that there were pieces of Jesus’ words being passed around and a great many people had memorized Jesus’ words but all of those in the first few centuries relied on 2 things – the Written Word and having constant communication with the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit spoke directly to people and at other times He used visions, dreams, nature and other means to speak to people. The Holy Spirit is not limited to His Word. Since He is God, He can use all manner of means to speak to us.
There are some things that we can’t find in detail in the Bible. So, we are encouraged to go to the Author of the Bible for those things. Now, we have to understand that nothing the Spirit says is going to counter act what the Spirit inspired in the Word. And there is nothing in the Word that the Spirit is going counter act in teaching us, guiding us or training us.
For example, we are not going to be able to say that suddenly the Spirit has decided to supersede Jesus’ two great commandments, the way to Salvation, traditional marriage or Jesus being the Only Way to the Father.
But what we are saying is in our lives things do come up that there is not a straight out answer in chapter and verse. It is those times that the Holy Spirit will give us our answers if we ask and wait on Him.
3. Finally, the Holy Spirit will help us to communicate with others
The Apostle Paul did not always know how to speak to people. This was especially true when he wrote and spoke to the Church at Corinth. It was also true when he went to the Church at Thessalonica.
He didn’t fully understand their language, their customs and their cultures. So, he relied on the Person, Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit.
Listen to Paul words in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
“And I, when I came to you, brothers (and sisters) did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message was not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
1 Thessalonians 1:5
“because our Gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.”
Paul knew that the only way he could talk to those of a different mindset, of a different language and of a different culture was, through the Person, Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit.
Paul was relying on what Jesus had told his disciples back in Mark 13:11
“When they arrest you and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but it is the Holy Spirit.”
Today, we are in need of the ability to communicate with one another. One generation to another generation. One culture to another culture. One human being to another human being.
We know how to hold signs. We know how to shout and spit at one another. We know how to protest and sadly even how to damage buildings and structures. But we are miserable at being able to communicate human being to human being in meaningful and lasting ways.
We see families falling apart inside and outside the Church. We see parents and children not getting along, we see grandparents and grandchildren not being able to talk to one another, understand one another and at times even wanting to like one another.
And with people living longer it is becoming quite a problem. It is very possible today to have four or five generations of families living near each other. And while that is exciting it is at time frustrating in trying to get everyone on the same page.
How much better would it be for us to allow the Holy Spirit to communicate in and through us? How much better would it be for us to allow the Holy Spirit to be our teacher, guide and trainer? How much better would to be for us to allow the Holy Spirit to control our words and inspire our words.
That’s what happened on Pentecost. The 120 were able to communicate across language barriers, cultural barriers and generational barriers. They did not do this in their own strength but through the Person, Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit.
Philip was able to communicate with the Ethiopian on the way to Gaza through the Person, Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit.
Peter was able to communicate to Cornelius and discover a whole new way of treating people through the Person, Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit.
If you find yourself having trouble getting through to your family, your co-workers or your friends then by all means don’t rely on yourself. Give your mind, your heart and your mouth over to the Holy Spirit.
Jesus made it clear to His Disciples and to us that He had to go back to the Father. He had to go back to the Father to prepare a place for us and to make intercession for us.
In His place, Jesus told us He would send His Holy Spirit.
+His Holy Spirit would comfort us, guide us, convict us, cleanse us, live inside of us and teach us.
+He would become our Teacher. He would teach us more and more about Jesus.
+He would speak to us directly, through our minds, through our dreams, visions, through nature and a 1000 other ways.
+The Holy Spirit who would show us how to communicate and get along with one another.
+The Holy Spirit who would show us the future and help us become all that God wants us to become.
So, as we close this morning how is your Teacher/Student relationship going with the Holy Spirit?
Are you allowing Him to teach you and help you experience a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?
Are you experiencing any new revelations; dreams or visions?
Are you receiving new knowledge, wisdom and insight?
Are you understanding Jesus better and are understanding His words better?
Are you living the Christian life you want to live – one with power, with authority, with grace and mercy?
Let’s determine today that we will open ourselves more to the Holy Spirit.
Let’s determine today that we will be open to more of the teachings of God’s Holy Spirit.
Let’s pray for ears to hear the words of the Holy Spirit, for eyes to see new visions and revelations, for hearts to be filled with His love, joy and peace and for a body that will be obedient to all His leadings.
I believe if we will do that then we will be amazed at what He does in our lives!
Closing Prayer/ Communion / Blessing
