Acquire The Fire #1 – Flying Closer To The Flame 9.3.03 Over the next few weeks, we’re going to look at the central character of the Book of Acts.. the Holy Spirit. And I want to say a word up front about this. There’s probably no area that’s led to more disagreement, and, at the same time, to more freedom, than the role of the Holy Spirit. So we’re going to plunge kind of deeply into this tonight and for the next few weeks.
Author John Ortberg makes this point: It’s possible that a person can get some of their ideas about the Holy Spirit wrong, but be so open and tender and submissive that they’re used by the Holy Spirit. And it’s possible that some people can get a lot of ideas about the Holy Spirit right, but become arrogant and judgmental & proud. So our goal is to get both the right ideas and the right heart. So lets look at… 1. The ‘Age of the Spirit’ Acts 2:1-8, 11, 41
This is account of the pouring out, or the baptism, of the Spirit that Jesus had promised. And it resulted in 2 things. * One of them is that people are led into life with Jesus - about 3000 that day. * Another is that where there had been division once -there is now unity. There’s a kind of reversal of the curse going on there. You might remember a place in the Bible, in the Old Testament where a great crowd of people gathered, and in act of pride and defiance tried to reach their way to God. And something happened. People who’d previously been able to understand each other went away no longer able to communicate. Anybody remember the story of where that happened?
The Tower of Babel. Its the story of Babylon. Well, on the day of Pentecost, God pours out His spirit. And instead of people building a tower to get up to God, God sends His Spirit down to them. And people who had been divided, from different places and different languages, they become- through the power of the Spirit - able to communicate. They become one. God breaks through the barriers.
What went wrong at Babylon went right at Pentecost. What went wrong at Babylon - the spirit of pride and arrogance that led to divisiveness and the loss of community - it went right at Pentecost, and God poured out His Spirit. And so, from the day of Pentecost on, this is the age of the Spirit. * The ‘Age of the Spirit’ is also the ‘Age of the Church’ The church has always been designed to be a Spirit-led, Spirit-inspired, Spirit-directed church. A church without the Spirit is a religious club, in both senses of the word: * ‘club’, meaning a powerless association of people with an insignificant purpose * ‘club’ in the sense of something to beat people over the head with, and inflict pain
Truthfully, we tend to be drawn to the attention-getting aspects of spirituality. For instance, suppose there were two churches. And in 1 of them, people started giving money away to the poor. They sold their houses, they simplified their lifestyles, they devoted themselves to the poor. Then suppose there was another church where people in the church just started levitating -bodies started levitating, because God could do that. I’m not saying that He has or that He does, I’m not suggesting that we should try. Just imagine for a moment that it happened. Which church would get the headlines? Which church would people want to go see? Yeah. But, which church would be showing evidence of the greatest work of the Holy Spirit?
Jesus said at the beginning of His ministry, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me; He has anointed Me’ and here’s the 1st sign of the age of the Spirit: "to proclaim Good News to the poor." The age of the Spirit, the age of the church is much more defined by that kind of work, than by levitation, or its cousins... which I’ll get into a bit later. This doesn’t mean that the Spirit always manifests Himself in the same way, at all times, in all places.
2. The Activity of the Spirit How do we become people who are able to discern the presence and activity of the spirit? Go to Galatians 5. While you’re turning there, 1 John 4:1 says we’re to test the spirits –we’re to practice discernment. And this is critical, because if we can get clarity on this, we’ll b able to handle all kinds of issues. OK Gal 5:22. Paul’s been talking about living in the Spirit as opposed to living by the flesh, and of course, if people are going to do that, they need to know what life in the Spirit looks like, right? V 22-23
Paul’s saying, ‘Let’s live the kind of life that the Spirit offers. This is the fruit (evidence) of the Spirit.’ Think for a moment about that analogy. Think about what it means to bear fruit. EX: If you plant an apple tree, what kind of fruit do u get? Apparently we don’t have a lot of Future Farmers of America here tonight…. Take a wild guess, friends. If you plant an apple tree, what would you expect to get? (Apples!) There you go! OK. That’s just the way fruit works. Whatever the tree is, yields that kind of fruit.
Now, Paul’s saying, this is the evidence of the Spirit. Here’s the point: * The Spirit leads people into the kind of life Jesus led. Now, if you long to be filled by love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - if you long to be filled by these, then you’re longing to be filled by the Spirit. That’s the life Jesus led. Now, this is reinforced by Jesus. Matthew 7:15-20. When a person’s life and actions are characterized by Biblical love, joy, peace and so on, that demonstrates the presence of the Holy Spirit’s power upon them and presence in them. Now, look at vs 21. Jesus says…
OK, so there’s going to be people who claim to know Christ, claim to be Christians, but don’t have the reality in their lives, who will not enter the kingdom of heaven. "But only," -- notice what’s central here -- "But only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven.’ Vs 22-23
Is it a bad thing to prophesy or to cast out demons or do deeds of power? No. He’s saying those aren’t the heart of how u detect the presence of the Spirit. Here He says it’s the one who does what? Who does the will of My Father in heaven. Who’s the one who does the will of the Father? What does that person look like? Well, they’re filled with love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. That’s what somebody who has the Spirit inside looks like.
1Corintians 12:1: Paul’s writing to the church at Corinth, which is filled with many good things. Its filled with vitality, life, enthusiasm, and its filled with extraordinary manifestations of the Holy Spirit. So Paul doesn’t want to damage their enthusiasm; he wants to help them get clear on what’s central. Vs 1 Now in vs 4, we see his concern. So now we’re seeing that in addition to fruit (evidence) of the Spirit, there are also gifts.
V7: "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit." Why? "For the common good." And then he runs through a series of gifts: read Now, these are extraordinary manifestations - but some of them have created some dissension in Corinth. And some folks apparently are using them, particularly the gift of tongues, which is good gift – but they’re using it as kind of litmus test for super-spirituality. In other words, those who have it, claim to be unique or special or in a higher category of spirituality.
So Paul here is pointing out the fact that all these are activated by the same Spirit. Different people have different gifts, he says, and that’s how God wants it to be, and that’s a good thing. So, he gives guidelines. 14:40 ‘Within the church things are to be done decently and in order." A little earlier on, v22 and following, he says things are to be done with a view as to how they may affect outsiders or unbelievers who may be present.
Paul, in between chapters 12 and 14, puts one of most famous passages in Scripture, and its a chapter on love --the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. The key thing I want us to focus on is, why is this chapter placed here? The reason is that people are apt to misunderstand the primary way that you discern the presence of the Spirit.
So at the end of chapter 12, after laying out a variety of gifts, he says in vs 31 "But strive for the greater gifts. And now I’ll show you the most excellent way." 13:1-3 rd He’s just boring in, like a laser beam, to give clarity to what’s central. Over and over and over in Scripture, we learn that we discern the presence of the Spirit because He always leads people into the life that Jesus led. He leads us into the fruit of the Spirit, of which the preeminent one is love.
3. Things Attributed to the Spirit What are we to make of modern-day movements that feature or focus on some of these extraordinary manifestations of the Holy Spirit? How are we to think about them?
Let me just give a little background on this. So, I need to talk about church history for a moment, OK? In 1870, a man named William Seymour was born. He grew up in a church that’s known as a ‘holiness church’. They were churches that tend to emphasize holiness and personal sanctification. They had kind of a loose association with John Wesley. And they taught that after conversion, at some point along the line, people would experience a deeper experience of being sanctified, or being largely delivered from the desire for sin.
Around the turn of the century, William Seymour went to Bible college in Houston. Interestingly enough, Seymour, because he was African-American, and because of segregation laws in those difficult days, he couldn’t sit in the classroom, so he had to sit in the hallway. And the teacher taught that when the Holy Spirit came on people after conversion to bring about this greater work of sanctification, that was called ‘the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the sign of it, he said, was that people would speak in tongues.
Now, William Seymour, a couple years after that, went out to Southern California to a place called the Azusa Street Mission*, and as he was preaching there, a revival broke out and people began to speak in tongues. And there were other extraordinary things that happened - and for 3 years, services went on at the Azusa St Mission day and night. And this led to what became known as the Pentecostal movement.
Numbers of denominations sprung from it. The Assemblies of God is one of them. Also the Church of God in Christ, eventually the Four-Square Church. The early days of this movement weren’t easy. The folks in this movement were commonly referred to as "holy rollers." They were generally poor, they had little power, little education, they were on the wrong side of the tracks and their churches were as well. So it wasn’t easy for these fledgling denominations. As they grew, they grew their own distinctions. Each of these denominations or movements are a little different.
In classical Pentecostalism, a key belief is that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience separate from conversion, always after conversion, and the unvarying evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues. They say, if you haven’t spoken in tongues, you’ve not been baptized in the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t mean you’re not saved, but you haven’t been baptized by the Holy Spirit. That’s the teaching.
Around 1959, Episcopal leader by the name of Dennis Bennett had a similar kind of Pentecostal experience. And that began what became known as the Charismatic renewal. And now numbers of people in churches like the Anglican Church, the Lutheran Church, the Methodist Church, and the Catholic Church, began to undergo a similar kind of experience.
Some of you may remember, in 1966 students at Notre Dame* had this kind of a Charismatic renewal experience. It got nationwide media attention, and lot of good things happened. A lot of people in churches that had been previously quite dead, were reawakened to the reality of God, to a life of faith and vitality. Many people stayed in their churches and became kind of a force for renewal in those churches.
Then in the 70s & 80s came what’s sometimes called the "3rd wave." There was the Pentecostal movement, then the Charismatic renewal movement. Then the 3rd wave hit in 70s &80s in places like Calvary Chapel and Vineyard churches out in California. And what were viewed as the manifestations of the Spirit, became more diverse.
In fact, according to a Gallup Poll that was published in Christianity Today several years ago, people who labeled themselves as Charismatics or Pentecostals - only 17% of them said that they’d ever spoken in tongues. So, this new movement featured a broader range of manifestations, and was characterized by things like an exuberant, informal style of worship, signs and wonders -- like healings or words of prophecy, or what’s come to be known as being slain in the Spirit, where people, as they’re being prayed for, fall down.
In January 1994, in Toronto, Canada at the Vineyard church, there was kind of a revival, and people started, amongst other things, laughing. And this was referred to as holy laughter, again taken as evidence of the Holy Spirit, and it became a huge movement there. There were meetings that went on in Toronto at this church 6 nights a week. It spread to other areas around the world - there were books and articles and TV programs about it.
I have no doubt that there are people who’ve met Jesus through it, that there are people who’ve come closer to Him through it, and there are some things to rejoice about. There was also some extreme behavior. Not everybody who was involved in it - but some people were making animal-type noises. Clucking like chickens or roaring or whinnying, some people were doing what’s called "getting drunk in the Spirit". Kinda spinning off what Paul said, ‘Don’t be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.’ I saw a guy on TV preaching on how to be drunk in the Spirit. I struggled with this, I must admit. So some people were staggering through the streets of Toronto, ‘drunk in the spirit’.
There are some things to watch for and be cautious about. I think it would be fair to say, and people on both sides of this controversy have said that there’s been times in the movement where the teaching has been shallow, times where things are pretty clearly not being done decently and in order, times where the focus hasn’t been centered on a Biblical understanding of what the Spirit is about. Its critical that you and I stay clear on what is and what’s not the litmus test of the presence of the Spirit. Here’s the point: Manifestations are not the litmus test of the Spirit’s presence.
Now what I want to do in the moments that remain is offer some guiding truths to… 4. Flying Closer to the Flame. * Embrace Spirit-empowered worship. Well, what’s Spirit-empowered worship? Hands raised? Dancing? Tongues? Shaking? Clapping? If the litmus test is off- kilter, it leads to problems, because there’s a kind of law of diminishing returns. If we start focusing on how many hands got raised, then there becomes this pressure to reproduce it every night. And pretty soon it’s not enough.
If it’s whether people are speaking in tongues and how much, then soon that’s not enough. Then being slain in the Spirit is not enough. And then it gets more and more spectacular, because if it doesn’t, it looks like the Spirits not involved anymore.
The mark of great worship is not that its inhibited or uninhibited, spontaneous or planned out, physically expressive or relatively still, not even that it’s deeply emotional. The mark of great worship is that it honors God and brings attention to Him, that it knits us together in love with God and each other and empowers us for life in the kingdom. That’s what worship is about. There’s many different styles of it. Some of them are formal; some are spontaneous. We have our own style- its not the only one, not necessarily even the best. Its just what we can do and who we are.
* Embrace the Spirit as a person, not a technique. Prayer’s not a matter of technique. The Spirit is a person, not a force, and He knows the heart of the one who speaks to Him, and its the heart that counts. Mark 9, a man has a son that needs deliverance. ‘If you’re able to do anything, have pity and help us.’ Not a real bold prayer, but it was enough. Because he came to Jesus in sincerity, Jesus responds and heals. God can heal. God does heal. We ought to pray for it and expect it. But lets not have any simplistic formulas about how healing takes place. Here’s the next point:
Having a dramatic encounter with the Holy Spirit is a very helpful thing, but its not a shortcut to spiritual transformation. Here’s the point: * Embrace Spirit-empowered transformation. It would be nice to think there’s some kind of super-charged jolt that’s the secret passport to spiritual maturity. Many remember a drink that came out a while back -Jolt cola? There were billboards for Jolt cola with a guy whose hair was standing up on end, and the slogan was ‘All the sugar and twice the caffeine.’ One good shot of Jolt in the morning and you’re pretty much wired the whole day long.
Now, it would be nice if there was a spiritual Jolt that just took care of the need for growth. The truth about the life of a believer is that it’s a life of training. There are no shortcuts, no secret passageways. The life in the Spirit is a life full of joy, but its also a life in training to be like Jesus.
I certainly think that every one of us should pursue the deepest kind of life in the Spirit that can be pursued. And remember, Paul is one who had taken part in all kinds of miraculous healing, seen visions of heaven, he said "I rejoice that I speak in tongues more than any of you." Paul is one who speaks about extraordinary manifestations, then says, "But I’ll show you the most excellent way."
Then Paul says, ‘Pursue love.’ Here’s the truth. It may be that in your lifetime extraordinary appearing things will happen, or it may not. At the end of the day, that’s really beside the point. It doesn’t prove anything.. But I believe that we ought to devote ourselves in prayer to asking God for a mighty outpouring of the Spirit in us and in our midst, so that we’re led by the Spirit, responsive to the Spirit, and empowered by the Spirit But let’s not measure it in superficial ways, because that doesn’t really help anyone.
When people with the right heart are baptized in the Spirit, power is used not to impress but to serve. When people with the right heart are baptized in the Spirit, power is used with gentleness and humility. And the people of God, filled and transformed by the Spirit of God, will arise, and the gates of hell will not prevail against them. Lets reach out and embrace the Spirit tonight, receiving with the right heart. Let’s pray.
