Songs It is well w my soul go to www.aquarelles.com/spafford/ (might be neat to see a copy of the song on the projector). Then Haven sing and Tricia Daugherty sign to Michael W Smith’s ‘This is the air I Breathe” (sp.)
Most Mondays our EE team goes out to call on people who have visited the church. I will never forget the night that we called on Darryl and Sharon who went with us to TN on our marriage retreat in February. After a time of sharing the gospel the trainee realized what I already knew that Darryl and Sharon are strong Christians and deeply involved in a local fellowship. We shared with them that since it was still early we were going to make a cold call at a local Laundromat. We prayed together before leaving and the prayer was powerful and was laser focused on the person or persons we would encounter at the local Laundromat. Well, we got to the Laundromat only to find standing in front of that Laundromat two of the biggest African American men I have ever seen!
The other male member of our team felt like we should move on to a more timid side of town, but our lady member was insistent that these men needed the gospel and these were the ones God provided because of our prayer.
We are all afraid of different things at different times in our lives. Many Christians are like Peter the night he walked on water, they hear the Lord’s voice calling them to do something, but once they see the size of the task they take their eyes off of Jesus and they begin to sink.
Some Christians fear death, while others are just simply scared to death of all kinds of things, even to share their faith.
The only fear we should have is the fear of the one who has the power to throw us into Hell.
Therefore, if we should only fear God then we must believe that Jesus has provided the cure for any other fear we will ever face. Amen?
Well He has and His name is capital “P” Pneuma the Holy Spirit.
In our Christian churches and our churches of Christ we don’t talk a great deal about the Holy Spirit-maybe we “fear” that people will think we are Pentecostal. But the truth is in a way we are Pentecostal and although fire didn’t dance on our heads or we didn’t speak in some foreign tongue, we received the gift of the Holy Spirit when we were baptized into Christ.
The Scriptures we will hear today deal with the cure for fear through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. They will also deal with his role as prompter and comforter. We will see the power of the Holy Spirit living in our lives to prevent us from sinning and face death, even a violent death.
Jesus said some very important things to his disciples before He left this world. He said, “don’t worry, I am going to give you peace in every situation, so that you don’t have to toss and turn and worry all night.” “I am sending to you a counselor a comforter during your times of trouble, one who will remind you of everything I have taught you, when you are to be my witnesses and then find yourself on trial.”
I think A.W. Tozer understood the work of the Holy Spirit in this area as he penned these words: “Religious instruction, however sound, is not enough by itself. It brings light, but it cannot impart sight. The assumption that light and sight are synonymous has brought spiritual tragedy to millions. The Pharisees looked straight at the Light of the World for three years, but not one ray of light reached their inner beings. Light is not enough. The inward operation of the Holy Spirit is necessary to saving faith. The gospel is light but only the Spirit can give sight.”
Tozer said, . The inward operation of the Holy Spirit is necessary to saving faith. Without the Spirit running your life Tozer says “you don’t have a faith that is going to save you.”
1. The Holy Spirit is a counselor to bring to our mind all that we have learned through studying the WORD of God.
However way too many people believe that the Christian life and the believer’s sanctification is totally the work of the Holy Spirit and they love to quote Phil 1:6 “ being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” They forget to include verse 5 “because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
In our passage from Luke Jesus says this, “the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you.” The point is that the disciples participated in their learning they studied under the great rabbi himself- Jesus and we also must study the Word of God under men who have studied to show themselves approved by God and aided by the teaching of the indwelt Holy Spirit. When we do our part as the disciples did theirs when that temptation comes through the door the Holy Spirit reminds us of the Scriptures we have study and we will flee the situation and be prevented to falling into sin that brings death.
In the book Healing the Masculine Soul, Gordon Dalbey says that when Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Helper, he uses a Greek word, paraclete, that was an ancient warrior’s term. "Greek soldiers went into battle in pairs," says Dalbey, "so when the enemy attacked, they could draw together back-to-back, covering each other’s blind side. One’s battle partner was the paraclete." Our Lord does not send us to fight the good fight alone. The Holy Spirit is our battle partner who covers our blind side and fights for our well-being.
As our paraclete it is the Holy Spirit who covers our back when we step out by faith to tell someone the Good News of Jesus Christ. In Mark 13 Jesus told His disciples, “when ever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.” This is the same advice Paul gave young Timothy, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15).
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS OUR COMFORTER.
Have you ever let the Holy Spirit just comfort you in times of trouble and despair, while He hears the cries of your heart and prays on your behalf to the Father.
I can remember some troubled times in my Christian life when I couldn’t even pray all I could do was cry and moan. All I could say was “Jesus, oh sweet Jesus, HELP!” And yet, the Holy Spirit was comforting me from inside me and praying for me and the peace came.
Have you known comfort and peace like that in your own lives regardless of what is happening?
If you have-will you share that with others-who need Jesus right now in their own struggle?
Are you showing people how you face crisis in your own life because the Holy Spirit dwells in you?
If you have never experienced the Holy Spirit as comforter- you need to let go and let God have your battle.
Horatio Spafford obviously knew the Holy Spirit as comforter when he penned the words to It is Well with My Soul.
Horatio Spafford was moving his family (a wife and 4 daughters) to Jerusalem so they could draw closer to God with a short vacation in France on the way. It was after the great Chicago fire and they had secured passage on an ocean line,. but Horatio had to send his family on ahead because he was delayed in Chicago with business. The next contact he had with his family was a telegram he received from his wife that had two words written on it “survived alone.” The ship was struck by another vessel and all 4 of his daughters drowned. When Horatio was in passage to meet his grieving wife in France midway across the Atlantic the captain called him to the bridge and by dead reckoning and by the use of navigational charts told Horatio this is the spot where your girls were lost. Horatio Spafford who knew the Holy Spirit’s power to act as comforter penned the words to that famous song.
I think Horatio Spafford wanted to grow near to God, I don’t think we have to go to Jerusalem or the Bible college or seminary to grow near to God.
We have to open our lives to the leading of the Holy Spirit, to what the Word of God has taught us!
The HOLY SPIRIT GUIDES US INTO Right LIVING
When you hear that still small voice that says “you need to say your sorry that is the Holy Spirit.”
Husbands you know what I am talking about- you hear it. The voice that says “you need to go to your wife and you need to say, I’m sorry honey.”
When your stomach aches and your hands are sweating because you know God is calling you to do something-That is the Holy Spirit.
Blackabee says in his study Experiencing God –that you hear God’s voice you say “ok” and then you have what he calls “a crisis of confidence” and we become paralyzed like Peter and we sink.
The Bible says the Spirit battles against the flesh:
Chuck Colson, Frances Schaefer, and many others have written books that deal with how we should live as Christians, but the Bible teaches that it is the Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth who teaches us and gives us direction in how we should live. We know that a life led by our own design is a life led by the flesh, no matter how moral or intellectual that thinking may be. Often times under the power of our own flesh we do not even know why we do what we do.
You see a picture of this in your children unless they are different than mine when you ask them, “Why did you do that?” Don’t you hear these words? I dunno! For the Christian living by the flesh like the child it is simply immaturity. It is simply a symptom of leading a life without the Holy Spirit as our guide.
We know that the flesh led life leads us into the acts of the sinful nature: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like (Gal. 5:19-21).
That is what Paul is telling the Ephesian church: Eph 5:18 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit. Interesting isn’t it husbands that this verse comes right before the command to love our wives- to present them to ourselves pure, Holy, blameless-its supernatural.
There is only one way we husbands can see our wives other than sinners, there is only one way we can present them to ourselves pure and Holy. THAT way is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Men you won’t do it under your own power.
Let me paraphrase, what Paul is saying. Just like wine, heroin, ecstasy or crack cocaine can change your behavior (when you are filled with it because they are mind altering) so too when you are filled with the Holy Spirit and you listen you can change your behavior.
Without the Holy Spirit you cannot hear God- But with the Holy Spirit when we are still and listen to God we will hear the Spirit telling us to say “I’m sorry honey” and we will have the power to do it.
The life that is filled with the Holy Spirit, and listens and obeys is the life that has died to self and is full of the fruit of the Spirit which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22 –23).
As I meditated on today’s passage for this message: It became very clear to me that this deacon Stephen (full of faith and the Holy Spirit) understood what Jesus was saying in
Acts 1:8 but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."
Power – The Grk word dunamis [doo-nam-is] means miraculous power. (The kind of power we can have to say, “honey, I’m sorry or forgive them Father.”) Or the kind of power that Wes Hatch has to say “I don’t have much time on this earth but that is ok.” When I went to see Wes I asked all the ministerial questions to see if he was OK with his prognosis. He is. His concern is for people in the church who only think they are saved.
You will be my Witnesses- The same name Jesus gives himself as martyr He gives to those of us who are faithful followers and willing not only to die for Him but to begin by dying to ourselves and to our fleshly desires that enslave us and be filled by and listen to His Holy Spirit.
You need to know that Stephen didn’t go to Jerusalem Bible College or to seminary.
Stephen should be our model regarding the power of the Holy Spirit to guide us, teach us and remind us what to say, how to live Godly lives using the Holy Spirit’s power, and how to die!
Stephen’s story in Acts 6 and 7 bears witness to the power the dunamis of the Holy Spirit in His life.
He was strong in the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit guided him and reminded him of everything he needed to say to the Sanhedrin.
As a matter of fact because he had done his part in study and learning under the apostles that his Jewish opponents in debate could not refute him.
They who had all the power were powerless. Why? Because Stephen had the paraclete the powerful person of the Holy Spirit covering his back and they could not stand up to his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke (Acts 6:10) as he argued that Jesus was the Messiah.
Christians are you here today still believing that you are powerless, that you need the world’s resources to cover your back and refusing to witness for Christ because evangelism scares you?
Then we need to let the self go- and the Spirit cover our back!
These Sanhedrin conspired secretly against Stephen and got false witnesses to say that he was a blasphemer against Moses and God (Acts 6:11). Yet they could not deny that when they looked at Stephen what they saw was the face of an angel (Acts 6:15). Chapter 7 is living proof of Jesus’ promise that He would send the Counselor and the Counselor would guide us into and remind us of all truth. Stephen’s knowledge and accuracy of the Scripture is simply flawless and eloquent.
In Acts 7:51-54 Stephen points out to these the synagogue of the freedman (actually they are the synagogue of satan) the difference between them and the Christians. “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.” “When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him.”
But Stephen has no fear, he is not intimidated by their power, by their knowledge or by their threats, by their lies or their reaction to him. Stephen knew no matter what they did to him, the Comforter would be there to wrap him in His loving arms and as the paraclete covering his back.
He is simply described like this in vv. 55-6 “But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
They could not stand the truth of God as it flowed from Stephen’s mouth by way of the power of the counselor and yet Stephen had to know the paraclete was guarding him and the Holy Spirit comforter was hugging him. They were not free but trapped. It was Stephen who was free. They covered their ears, yelling at the top of their voices, they rushed him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone Stephen to death (Acts 7:57).
Notice the dunamis (power) of the Holy Spirit even at the hour of our death, death by terrorist, death by war, death by disease the same Spirit present on that road with Stephen is present with the believer today. We are not powerless I death even death as a martyr a witness for Christ but we are powerful.
Stephen, prays “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit and Lord, do not hold this sin against them and he died.”
Brothers and sisters you cannot be any more free or powerful than at the hour of your death through the power of the Holy Spirit forgive those who are crushing your body by stoning. That is unnatural- the Holy Spirit who guards us is supernatural.
Do you have the Holy Spirit Power in your life today? Power to evangelize, power to live free from the slavery of sin, power to die knowing heaven will open up for you too?
If you are not a Christian you don’t have the Holy Spirit’s power- you need Jesus?
If you are a Christian and don’t have it you need to study the Word, die to self and participate (NASB), partner with (NIV) and share the Gospel. (NRSV). Ph. 1:5) The word is (koineia) fellowship. We all need to fellowship with Christ.
Works Cited
Fisher, Fred Holman Bible Dictionary Quick Verse CD-Rom.
Tripp, Tom Colusa, California. Leadership, Vol. 15, no. 2.
