Over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at what makes us different than those around us. What distinguishes us from the people we meet every day who aren’t followers of Jesus? These are the people we say hello to when we’re getting coffee at the bank. People we meet when we’re taking a walk around the lake. The people sitting next to us at a high school basketball game. What makes us different? Are we smarter, or more capable than they are? Probably not. Are we nicer, or more generous? Not necessarily. In fact, Paul says the opposite; he wrote to the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 1:26) that among them there were not many who were wise, or influential, or who came from one of the leading families of that area. They were normal, ordinary people; there was nothing unique about them. And the same is true of us; on the surface, we look like anyone else.
What makes us different is something deeper and more profound. What makes us different is that we have a supernatural power. Not to be confused with a superpower; we’re not faster than a speeding bullet, or more powerful than a locomotive. But what we do have is something better than a super-power. We have a power that comes from the Spirit of God who lives in each of us. That power is what makes our experience of life, day to day, different than the life experience of those who do not yet know Christ. And my goal throughout this series is to help us to better understand His power, so that we can experience all that God has for us as his children.
We began by looking at the power of prayer and the power of the Word. I hope that you are applying what we learned in those sermons. I hope that you are praying, once a day, “Father, please bless our church”. And I hope you will read your Bible today. Because both of those—consistent prayer and consistent intake of the Word—are important means of accessing the Spirit’s power. Last week, we studied how the Holy Spirit enables us to live together in unity and harmony as the body of Christ. How He enables us to treat one another with compassion, and kindness, and humility, and gentleness, and patience. How He enables us to bear with one another, and to forgive one another, as Christ forgave us. And that’s a wonderful thing. It’s a joy to be together with other believers and to share our lives, when we are living out these virtues by the power of God. Our love for one another is also a testimony to the power of the gospel, as the world around us sees it being lived out, day to day.
So today, we continue looking at the power of the Spirit. And as I mentioned last week, this is not an independent spiritual force that we can manipulate, as you might find in some Eastern religions. No, the Power of the Holy Spirit is simply the person of the Holy Spirit acting in power, in and through us. I’ll highlight three ways in which the Holy Spirit empowers us to know God, and to live lives that are honoring and pleasing to God.
First, he leads us into the truth, and protects us against falsehood, especially with regards to the truth about Jesus Christ and salvation. Let’s look at Jesus’ promise:
“16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16-18)
Here, we see that the Spirit is called “the Spirit of truth”. What this means is that truth is an essential aspect of his character. There is no falsehood in him, of any kind. There are no contradictions, no deceptions, no gray areas. He is true in every respect. And this can be difficult for us to fully accept, because we are so accustomed to treating everything we see and hear with skepticism. Which is necessary. You can’t take at face value everything you read online, or see on television; or even what you are told by other people. You have to ask, constantly, is this really true? But when it comes to what the Spirit has given us in the Word of God, we can trust it completely. Because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. And Jesus Christ said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). He Himself is the Truth.
The Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of truth because he is the source of truth for us. He reveals to us the truth about Jesus Christ. How does he do that? Verse 17 in the passage we just read tells us that in the past he was “with” God’s people—meaning that he provided revelation and guidance to them, but from an external perspective. He was working from the outside in, through their eyes, and ears, through their senses. However, in the present age, ever since the day of Pentecost, he is not only “with” us but he is “in” us. And so he is no longer outside of us, or separate from us. He indwells us; he inhabits us. And he inhabits every part of us—our mind, and our emotions, and our will. Another way of saying this is that, if you are a follower of Christ, there is no aspect of who you are that is untouched by the Holy Spirit. And that is how he is able to lead you into the truth more fully; because he is no longer working from the outside in, but is working from the inside out.
Let me give you an analogy. When a musician is learning a song, they have the words, and the notes, and the chords written out on a piece of sheet music, a score. They can reproduce what they are seeing; they can perform the song, but only it if they have the written music in front of them. They have to look at the musical notation on the page and translate it into what they are vocalizing, or playing on their instrument. The music is “with” them, there on the paper. But after they have played it many, many times, over and over, they no longer need the written music. They have memorized it. They have “learned it by heart”. The song is not something external to them, but it lives in them; it has entered into their mind, and their heart. It has become a part of them. And so now, when they sing or play, they are expressing what is in them; in a real sense, they are not just performing; they are sharing a part of themselves. And that’s similar to the difference between the Holy Spirit being “with” God’s people, in the Old Testament, and being “in” God’s people, now, in the present age. He is a part of us. And so when we act in obedience to God, when we follow Christ as God has called us to do, we aren’t just performing, or following instructions, as they did when keeping the Old Testament Law. Instead, we are expressing what is in us. We are expressing “who” is in us.
As we saw last week, the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit is a necessary gift. We need Him. Because to grasp and absorb the truth about Christ is only possible because the Spirit is living in us. Without the gift of the Holy Spirit, we simply could not understand spiritual truth. Listen to what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2:14:
14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)
“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness”. For an unbeliever, the obstacle to understanding the truth about God is not intellectual, but spiritual. They are unable to accept it, and that inability to accept it makes them unable to fully understand it.
Here's an example. Have you ever tried to persuade someone of something that you knew to be true, one hundred percent, but that the other person was simply unwilling to accept? For whatever reason. Because it conflicted with the way they were raised; or because it was contrary to some deeply held view or some preconceived notion of theirs? Or perhaps because understanding it would require them to change in some way. No matter how clearly you stated the facts, or how logically you presented your arguments, they simply refused to believe. They refused to change their mind, even when presented with overwhelming evidence. Political debates sometimes fall into this category, don’t they? Now, were they truly unable to understand what you were trying to tell them? In a sense, yes. But their inability to understand it was caused by their unwillingness to accept it. In other words, their lack of comprehension wasn’t a head issue, it was an issue of the heart and the will. Now, they may have thought that you were the obstinate, hardheaded one. But even so, the point is the same. An unwillingness to believe results in an inability to understand. Since the truth of the Bible conflicts with what people in their natural state desire to do, which is to ignore God and just continue living their lives however they want, they are unwilling to believe. And therefore, they are unable to understand. It seems like foolishness to them. Fairy tales. Wishful thinking. “Non-sense”. It literally makes no sense to them, no matter how clear and obvious it seems to you. They are unwilling to see, and therefore they are unable to see. In a very real sense, they are blind to the truth. And, lest we look down on them, remember that the only reason we can see what they can’t is that we have the Holy Spirit. It’s not because we’re smarter, or more spiritually sensitive, or more moral, or because of any other reason, but only because God has revealed the truth to us through his Spirit.
Does that mean we give up hope of ever persuading anyone of the truth of the gospel? Do we abandon logic and evidence in seeking to lead people to Christ, and just appeal to their emotions? No. But what it does mean is that our efforts to persuade others, using facts and logic, will only be successful if the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to the truth. Because conversion is a work of the Spirit. You cannot argue someone into the kingdom. The Holy Spirit must be there with you, opening their hearts to the message. And so we need to ask Him to do that.
Now, while conversion involves the initial understanding of the gospel that we have when we come to faith, that isn’t the end of his help. The Holy Spirit also gives us the ability to understand deeper truths about God throughout our Christian life. In 1 Corinthians 2:9-12, Paul writes this:
9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
“The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” The Spirit knows the mind of God. He knows what God has done for us. He knows what God can do for us. He knows what God will do for us in the future. And verse 12 of the passage we just read tells us that God gave us his Spirit, “so that we may understand what God has freely given us”. So that we can know what He knows. The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to fully grasp what it means to be a child of God. And that includes “what God has prepared for those who love him”, verse 9. It includes the hope of eternal life. It includes joy, and love, and blessings, in this world and in the world to come. That hope is a great source of comfort as we go through various trials. And it will be an even greater source of comfort and strength when we come to the end of our lives. The hope which the Spirit gives us concerning eternal life is what enables us to face death with peace and confidence. Some of you have observed that firsthand, seeing the peace which saints from our own congregation have experienced in their last days.
Let me ask you: Those of you who are parents or grandparents, do you love your children and grandchildren? Of course you do. And because you love them, you work to provide them with good things. You labor, and strive to make sure that they have everything they need, and even more. You want them to have, not just the bare essentials, but good things, things that will cause them to be glad, and to rejoice. Things that perhaps they didn’t even know they wanted or needed, until they received them. You want to see that reaction of surprise, and delight, and amazement, as they come to realize what you have given them. Think of Christmas morning, or when they open a birthday present, or a graduation present, or a wedding gift, and what they find there is more than they were expecting, more than they even imagined. Have you ever had that experience?
Our Father, God, is the same way. We are his beloved children. And he has prepared for us wonderful gifts, for this life and the next. Gifts of joy, and peace, and love, and hope, and comfort. Gifts of freedom. Gifts of strength. Gifts of change and transformation. Gifts of renewal and healing. Gifts of provision. Gifts of friendship. Gifts of forgiveness and reconciliation. And so many more. Paul tells us, again, in verse 9 that they are so wonderful, and so abundant, that we can’t even imagine them. And God fervently desires us to know and to receive those gifts. How are we able to do that? By the power of his Spirit, who dwells in us. He is the one who opens our minds and hearts to understand and to receive, all of God’s gifts. As verse 10 says, “these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.”
In Ephesians, Paul puts it this way,
“16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19)
What Paul is telling us is that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can understand God’s love for us. We can not only grasp it intellectually or theoretically, but we can know it in our experience. What does that mean? Let’s start by what it doesn’t mean. Understanding “what God has freely given us”, grasping the full extent of Christ’s love for us, is not just a matter of understanding, logically, what the text of Scripture says. Because verse 19 tells us here that it “surpasses knowledge”. And so the understanding that the Spirit gives us isn’t just the ability to interpret Scripture. It’s the ability to interpret our lives in light of Scripture. It isn’t just the ability to grasp Biblical or theological truth. It’s the ability to see how that truth applies to our lives. In other words, the supernatural ability and power which the Holy Spirit gives us is the ability to combine knowledge with faith.
And that’s what those without the Spirit cannot do. They cannot combine knowledge with faith. They can study the Bible. But they cannot grasp the true meaning of what they read, because they cannot accept or understand what it means for them. Now, they can acquire a kind of knowledge. A person can attend one of our so-called “Ivy League” universities and earn a Ph.D. in Biblical literature, or a degree in New Testament or Old Testament. They can study for years and become an expert in Hebrew, or Greek, or Ancient Near Eastern history, or Roman culture. They can study the writings of intellectual German theologians like Barth or Bultmann. They can study the books of the Bible, and their literary genres, and their cultural backgrounds. But if they do not know the God of the Bible, then they cannot truly understand what it means. Because their knowledge is not combined with faith. The Bible is just a dead letter to them. Because the “knowledge” that Paul is talking about here goes beyond the intellect. To “know this love that surpasses knowledge”, to “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ”, to “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” — that describes a kind of knowing and understanding that can only be gained by experiencing Christ through faith. That is a kind of knowledge and understanding that even years of academic study cannot provide.
Let me give you an analogy. Valentine’s Day was just a few days ago, so let’s use that. You can read classic romantic novels, like “Pride and Prejudice”, by Jane Austen. You can study Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. You can watch romantic movies, like “Casablanca” or “You’ve Got Mail”. You can study paintings or sculptures that depict the theme of love. You can even earn a Ph.D. in Human Development, or Psychology, or Sociology. But until you’ve been in love yourself, you won’t truly understand it. That experience changes everything.
It's the same way with the knowledge of Christ, and the knowledge of his love for us, in all of its depth and dimensions. It can only be understood by experience, by faith. And it’s the Holy Spirit who grants us faith and enables us to have that experience of Christ’s love. Well, if that’s true, you might ask, then what kind of experience do I need to have? Should I seek some kind of ecstatic religious experience, like speaking in tongues, as our charismatic or Pentecostal brethren practice? Do I need to see a vision, or hear God’s voice? No. You don’t need a special kind of religious experience. What you need is to gain God’s perspective on your life experience. You need the Holy Spirit to enable you to interpret your life experiences with the eyes of faith, guided by the truth of the Word. That’s how we come to know God; that’s how we come to experience the love of Christ. By believing, and trusting, that what we have gone through in our lives, what we are going through right now, and what we will experience in the future, is all an expression of God’s love toward us in Christ.
And the Holy Spirit can give us that perspective. Otherwise, we won’t realize that God’s hand has been at work in our lives, every day of our lives, and that God’s hand is at work in our lives even now, today and every day. The writer Frank O’Malley once described history as “just one [darn] thing after another”. And without the Holy Spirit giving us faith and insight, that is what our lives would seem like to us. Just one thing after another. Just a succession of events, with no overarching meaning or purpose.
But believers, those with the Spirit, can know that in all the events and experiences of our lives, God is at work, sovereignly drawing us to himself, caring for us, and lovingly molding us into the image of his Son, Jesus Christ. That’s the understanding that the Holy Spirit gives us. Not just understanding, intellectually, that this is what the Bible says. But trusting, in faith, that God’s hand is guiding everything we experience, the highs and lows, the triumphs and the tragedies, the peak experiences and the mundane daily details of our lives. Trusting that all of that—literally, all of that—is an expression of God’s love for us.
Now, a person without faith can look at the same experiences, the same life, and see nothing special in it. It’s just stuff that happened. To someone without faith, it’s just random. Good things happen and bad things happen. That’s life. Or worse, they see a cruel, uncaring universe playing nasty tricks on them. But the understanding that the Holy Spirit gives us through God’s Word tells a different story. It says, “I may not understand how all of this is working out for my good, and for the glory of God. But I know and trust that it is.” That’s the truth. And the result of that knowledge and faith is joy, and peace, and contentment.
All right. Let me give you a second way in which the Holy Spirit empowers us to live lives that are honoring and pleasing to God: He gives us wisdom. Here is what Paul writes to the church at Colossae:
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,” (Colossians 1:9)
As you can see here, wisdom and understanding are closely linked. But wisdom also includes insight into the meaning and significance of what we know. How, then, is godly wisdom, the wisdom that the Holy Spirit gives us, different from the world’s wisdom?
The difference is that the wisdom of the world only takes into account what we can comprehend with our senses; what we can see, and hear, and touch, and measure. It only includes things which can be explained as the result of physical processes. And so it ignores at least half of reality, which is all of the things that we can’t see, or hear, or touch, or measure. Worldly wisdom is fine, as long as it restricts itself to its proper domain, those things which ca be perceived with our five senses. The problem comes when the wisdom of this world attempts to understand spiritual realities. Then it goes completely off the rails. Because spiritual things can only be understood by Holy Spirit-enabled wisdom. And so when worldly wisdom attempts to explain anything that has a spiritual dimension—and people do have a spiritual dimension—it just falls flat on its face. Which is how we get some of the craziness we’re seeing in the world today. That’s why our popular culture has been decaying for many years. Because people have rejected what the Bible tells us about human beings. They’ve substituted human wisdom, worldly wisdom, for God’s wisdom and God’s revelation. And that wisdom is failing them. Human wisdom, in and of itself, unaided by the Holy Spirit, cannot understand people, because people are not only physical creatures; they are spiritual beings. People love, and hate, and desire, and hope. They rejoice and they mourn. They seek meaning. They have a need to know the God who made them. Worldly wisdom will try to explain all that as merely the result of physical processes, just chemicals sloshing around inside our brains. But it’s more than that. Those things are all expressions of the spiritual aspect of our humanity.
When the world’s wisdom attempts to understand spiritual things, and that includes who we are as human beings made in God’s image, it fails completely. But those are the things that matter the most. Let’s hope and pray that our nation turns back to God. Let’s hope and pray that God pours out his Spirit on our land. Because without His Spirit, it is impossible to understand who we are and what we were made for.
Finally, number three. Here is the third way in which the Holy Spirit gives us the power to live lives that are honoring and pleasing to God.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13)
Throughout this sermon series, I’ve spoken about some things we need to do, such as praying and reading the Bible. Bearing with one another and forgiving one another. But the Christian life isn’t just work, work, work until we get to heaven. There is a payoff, here and now. And that payoff is hope, and joy, and peace by the power of the Holy Spirit. The kind of hope, and joy, and peace that is far superior to anything the world can give us. And it is worth every ounce of labor or self-denial that it may cost us. The world can offer only temporary, and superficial versions of peace and joy. But what we have is lasting and deep.
• Let’s take hope. For the world, hope is nothing more than a wish, a desire. “I hope things will work out the way that I want.” But for a Christian, hope is a sure and certain reliance on the promises of God. And those promises never fail.
• The world can offer a kind of joy. But it lasts only as long as the good times last. When things get hard, or painful, or dark, their joy goes away. Our joy isn’t dependent on circumstances. It’s based on who we are in Christ, and what Christ has done for us, and what He will do for us. And so we can have joy regardless of what we may be going through.
• Likewise, the world’s peace requires a calm and peaceful life. But our peace comes from knowing and trusting in God. And so we can have peace even in the storms of life. Because we know he will bring us safely to the shore.
I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s well worth it. Knowing that by the power of the Holy Spirit, who lives in me, I don’t have to be worried, or anxious, or fearful. Knowing that my hope in God’s promises will be rewarded. Knowing that I can have joy in walking with Christ, no matter what my circumstances. It’s well worth it.
So to sum up: we are different than those without Christ, because we have power, the power of the Holy Spirit. And His power enables us to understand and experience all that God has for us. Let’s make sure that we are seeking to experience His power, every day. Amen.
