Intro
As part of his project for the 1997 Greater Idaho Falls Science fair, freshman Nathan Zohner urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical "dihydrogen monoxide." Many were shocked to learn there was no regulation of it, despite the following known hazards:
1. It can cause excessive sweating and vomiting;
2. It is a major component in acid rain;
3. It can cause severe burns in its gaseous state;
4. It is known to cause thousands of deaths per year when accidentally inhaled;
5. It is a major contributor to the erosion of valuable topsoil;
6. It has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients.
Given those facts, would you be willing to sign the petition? I probably would. Of the fifty people Nathan asked to sign, 43 said yes, 6 were undecided, and only one knew that “dihydrogen monoxide” is just the chemical name for water.
I suppose a lot of those 50 people had learned once upon a time that “dihydrogen monoxide” was water. But for all practical purposes, they were ignorant of that fact.
My dictionary defines ignorant as “knowing little or nothing; A person who has not had much chance to learn may be ignorant but not stupid.”
The folks in the Corinthian church were ignorant about the working of the Holy Spirit.
It wasn’t because they hadn’t had any experience of the Holy Spirit’s working among them. If you had gone to church in Corinth, you would have seen all kinds of supernatural gifts being displayed:
Tongues
The interpretation of tongues
People receiving revelations from God
It would seem like the Corinthians knew plenty about the Holy Spirit. But Paul tells them, “I want you to know the truth about (spiritual gifts)”
He literally says, “I don’t want you to be ignorant, I don’t want you to be misled about spiritual things”
He doesn’t actually use the word “gifts” here, though most versions include it. I believe Paul, in the first three verses, is speaking about more than just spiritual gifts, but about the most important aspect of the Holy Spirit’s work.
Even though they have had powerful experiences, they don’t have a biblical understanding of the spiritual gifts
And if they don’t have a biblical understanding of the spiritual gifts, then they don’t have a biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit Himself.
“It’s all fine and good to have spiritual experiences, but you need to understand them in the light of God’s revealed truth.”
If you don’t, you might be led astray by your experiences.
The believers in Corinth had come out of an utterly pagan background. Paul reminds them how they’d followed pagan deities, “idols which could not speak.”
Now they were serving a living God who could – and did, (AND DOES!) speak.
But if they were ignorant of the Holy Spirit, they might be misled by those who would pretend to speak by His power. It is still the case in many churches that if someone comes who has had experiences of spiritual power, people assume he or she must know more truth about spiritual things than we do.
So Paul tells them something critically important to anyone who wants to know whether the Holy Spirit is at work or not.
Verse 3 says, “I want you to know that no one who is led by God’s Spirit can say ‘A curse on Jesus!’ and no one can confess "Jesus is Lord," without being guided by the Holy Spirit.”
I don’t think this verse is saying that no one can utter the words “Jesus is Lord,” unless they are a true believer. But back then, “Jesus is Lord,” was not a bumper sticker slogan. They were ruled by the Romans, who wanted their subjects to worship Caesar above all other gods. You could worship all the idols you wanted, but Caesar was Lord – above all gods.
So if someone said “Jesus is Lord,” it was clear they meant, “I will not say, as I am compelled by law to say, ‘Caesar is Lord,’ because Jesus is my ultimate King, not Caesar.”
That was the very reason many Christians were put to death. SO when Paul says, “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit,” he means, no one can be a true follower of Christ except by the Holy Spirit.
And if someone does NOT accept Jesus’ lordship, they are NOT being led by God’s Spirit.
The Holy Spirit’s main job isn’t to give gifts. The Holy Spirit’s main job is to lead us to faith in Jesus
And once we have made an initial commitment to Christ, he leads us in our growth in Christ. It is only after he has established the Holy Spirit’s primary function in leading us to Christ, that Paul begins to talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Christians tend to fall into one of two errors about the gifts of the Holy Spirit:
Some develop an over-emphasis on the gifts, especially those which are more plainly supernatural. There are groups which teach that if you don’t speak in tongues, you don’t have the Holy Spirit... But it is very difficult to get that teaching from Scripture.
There are groups where the focus of gatherings tends to be on seeing “signs and wonders,” that is, miraculous demonstrations of the Spirit’s power. They’ll have speaking in tongues
Perhaps prayer for miraculous healings
Perhaps words of knowledge or prophecies
If you have ever been to a very charismatic worship service, it can be a pretty wild place!
In the 1730’s & 40’s, there was a great revival that swept through the American colonies. Churches which had become cold and lifeless were transformed by the Holy Spirit.
In the midst of that, there were some strange things that went on. Some of you may have read Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which was preached in a cold, dead church in Enfield, CT, not far from where I grew up.
Edwards presented this sermon outlining the certainty of eternal damnation for those who die apart from Christ. As he preached, people began screaming, wailing – even fainting
Why? Because they were so overcome with conviction of sin. This was not because Edwards was “working the crowd” trying to “whip up” some emotion, as might be the case in certain groups today.
In Edwards day, to call someone “enthusiastic” was an insult! In fact, Edwards – often identified as the greatest religious scholar in American history – was known for his dry delivery of his handwritten manuscripts.
The "emotional" responses people had to his message were not drummed up by Edwards, they were the natural outflow of the Holy Spirit at work in their lives to convict them of sin and direct them to Christ.
After awhile, however, those “manifestations” – visible, outward signs – became the gauge of whether the Holy Spirit was at work or not.
They thought, “if the Holy Spirit’s work in one place had been characterized by these all these signs, then it must mean if we don’t see the outward signs, the Holy Spirit isn’t working.”
They didn’t realize that just because God may make himself known in a certain, vivid way one time, doesn’t mean he always will.
When people focus on spiritual gifts or outward signs of the Spirit’s presence instead of focusing on Christ Himself and the truth of His word, they are prime targets for being led astray.
And sure enough, when these outward signs became more important than real repentance, the revival known as the Great Awakening ceased.
And don’t think that such things only happened hundreds of years ago!
We’ve been talking about the first of two errors people fall into regarding the Holy Spirit – that is, an over-emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit or on outward demonstrations of the Spirit’s power. But before we pat ourselves on the back too much for not falling into such things, let me talk about the error on the other side of the issue.
Some churches or groups are guilty of under-emphasizing or even neglecting the Holy Spirit and His gifts
Sometimes the worship and working of a church is so carefully orchestrated that the Holy Spirit couldn’t get a word in if He tried.
The church functions more like a secular corporation or club than like the living Body of Christ which is energized by the Holy Spirit.
We forge our own path rather than waiting on God and listening for His voice.
We seek to base what we do on biblical foundations – which is GOOD! – but sometimes we fail to remember that God did not just write a book and leave the rest up to us.
The Trinity is not “The Father, Son and Holy Book”!
Rather, God is alive, is active, is speaking and leading and guiding and doing miraculous things even now, even today.
There was a city guy who bought a farm and a bunch of milk cows. He was in the feed store one day, he complained his best cow had gone dry.
The store owner "Aren’t you feeding her right?"
The guy said, “I’m feeding her what you’ve been selling me”
"Are you milking her everyday?"
"Just about. If I need a glass of milk for breakfast, I go out and get it. If I don’t need any, I don’t get it--I just let her save it up."
You probably know better than that city slicker that cows don’t operate like that. It’s not like a savings account where, if you leave your money in their it’ll grow, but if you take it out, it shrinks.
Cows are just the opposite: if you don’t milk the cow, she stops producing milk.
The presence and power of the Holy Spirit are more like cow’s milk than like a savings account: if you take all you can get every day, then you’ll always find a fresh supply.
But if you decide you want to “save it up,” or that you really don’t need it every day, you may find nothing there when you go looking. That doesn’t mean, of course, that God’s power dries up, but our ability to access it and use it may shrink to the point where we just don’t have any room for it.
Asking for God’s power in six-ounce doses, or asking sporadically only at our convenience, may mean that for us, the source dries up.
It probably doesn’t surprise you that I am not afraid of our church getting too “out of control” regarding the power of the Holy Spirit.
We have a firm commitment to the Word of God which gives a foundation for our experience
I’m glad of that!
But my fear is that we may be seeing the gifts, the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit as a savings account, or an IRA It’s there in case of real emergencies, but you don’t want to live off it!
But see, God didn’t give us the Holy Spirit just for emergencies He’s not like a savings account
He’s more like a cow who needs to be “milked” every day. We need to seek the power and the filling of the Holy Spirit on a daily and even hourly basis.
The Word of God is vitally important or we are bound to be led away from the Lord. I am so thankful for the importance placed on the Scripture here at FBC. But we need the Holy Spirit and the word of God.
When I was in seminary, I had to read most of an enormous book with the enticing title, “Systematic Theology.” In one of the author’s lighter moments (of which there were precious few), he illustrated the importance of this with this saying:
If you have the Word without the Spirit, you’ll dry up
If you have the Spirit without the Word, you’ll blow up
But if you have the Word and the Spirit, you’ll grow up!
In order to have ANY eternal impact on our world, we must avail ourselves of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But we cannot concentrate so on the gifts that we forget about the giver.
In fact, I believe this passage teaches us that the primary gift of the Holy Spirit IS the Holy Spirit.
The greatest gift is the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.
The gifts of the Spirit are indications of His presence
If the Spirit is present, and if we are allowing Him free reign to work in and through us, we will see the gifts at work
Have you ever looked at a prism?
A prism is a piece of glass or translucent material with at least three sides, sometimes more.
When you shine a beam of white light through one side of it, a rainbow comes through on the other side.
Why is that?
Because white light is actually made up of light from every conceivable color of the rainbow.
When it’s all together, it’s just white
But the prism “bends” the light into it’s own wavelengths
And each color has it’s own wavelength, so each color comes out at a slightly different point,
What you see the full spectrum of light shining through a prism, you are simply seeing the different components of white light
I’m coming to the end of sermon, but I’m just beginning to touch on these last three verses
So don’t be surprised if you see them again next week!
But for now, let it suffice to say that God has intended the church – every church, OUR church – to function as a prism - That when the white light of the Holy Spirit comes upon us, we will be able to see the various aspects of His nature as we see each one using their spiritual gifts to the glory of God.
Wouldn’t it be a drag to see a rainbow that only had blue or red, but no other color?
The best rainbows are the ones where you can see each band of color, plus all the transitional colors as red turns to orange and orange turns to yellow and yellow turns to green and on and on down the line.
Conclusion
There are two errors, both of which keep us from fully experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
One is to focus only on experience, and not judge that experience by the truth of God’s Word
The other is to imagine that God is not alive and working among us even now.
Russell Conwell, one of the founders of my seminary, was famous for a sermon he called, "Acres of Diamonds" In it he told the story of an ancient Persian. His name was Ali Hafed, and he was very wealthy, but a friend told him he would be so much wealthier if he discovered a diamond mine.
Ali Hafed sold all he had, searched for diamonds, went broke, and ended his own life in despair.
Another man bought his old farm and one day, as his camel drank from the brook in his garden, he discovered diamonds.
That farm was the site of what became the magnificent mine of Golconda in India.
There are diamonds among us, we just need to let the Holy Spirit shine through.
