First Things First #4
“The Holy Spirit is Alive & Well” Acts 18:27 – 19:7
Have you ever been shocked to learn something… something that you should have known all along and you wished somebody had told you sooner?
• The story in Acts 18 & 19 has always been an interesting one to me. Here we have this fellow Apollos who is a Jew and described as a “learned man with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures.” (18:24-ff) He has been taught about Jesus and in turn with great fervor is out in his neighborhood spreading the good news… teaching “about Jesus accurately.” But there was something deficient in his understanding of baptism. He knew only the baptism of John. So, when Aquila and Priscilla encounter him, they invite him over and explain the way of God “more adequately.”
• So, its not surprise when Paul gets to Ephesus (where Apollos had been) that he encounters a number of “disciples” who are similarly deficient.
o “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you came to faith?” he asks. “No, we’ve never even heard that there IS a Holy Spirit.”
o So, Paul questions them and finds out that they, too, knew only the baptism of John. When he baptizes them into Christ, then the Holy Spirit came upon them.
• What is interesting to me here is that these were “disciples” of Jesus Christ, but were missing out on one of the most important and fundamental elements of Christianity… the Holy Spirit.
We’re continuing our series “First Things First” this morning looking at the fundamentals, the basics of our faith. So far, we’ve observed…
#1 There is a God
#2 He is a loving Father
#3 Jesus is His Son
And #4 this morning, I want us to look at the Holy Spirit.
Admittedly, our situation is quite different today. Most of us have been baptized into Christ, but I wonder if many of us don’t share something in common with these Ephesian disciples.
• I wonder if there might be some among us who are also missing out on the Holy Spirit… not that we don’t KNOW about the Holy Spirit… but we just aren’t quite sure what role he plays in the everyday life of an ordinary Christian.
• What role has the Holy Spirit played in your life? How much attention to him have you given?
• I wonder if we have ignored or neglected the Spirit in our practice of Christianity….
o For example, how many sermons on the Holy Spirit have you heard? How many books have you read? I have a wonderful little book in my office, “Basic Christianity” by a renowned Biblical scholar, John Stott. There’s a chapter on God and on Jesus; on our obligation to them. There’s no chapter on the Holy Spirit.
o A few months ago, the Spiritual Sword, a well-known publication in churches of Christ, put out an issue on the basics of Christianity… but, again, no mention of the Holy Spirit.
o I have a friend that I was talking with just the other day about this subject. He described growing up in a small, rural, very traditional church of Christ in southern Alabama during the 50’s & 60’s and he said half-way jokingly, “The Holy Spirit didn’t exist until I went to college.”
o Of course what he meant was that they just never talked about it. It wasn’t until he started reading for himself and studying that he began to get an awareness of what the Holy Spirit was all about. Maybe some of you can relate to that feeling.
Why have we ignored it… or at least neglected it?
• I have some theories… one of which is that we’re simply afraid of what we don’t understand. Another, we know we don’t want to fall into the same error that we believe many of our Pentecostal friends have bought in to. Or we see what some religious people are doing and claiming in the name of the Holy Spirit that doesn’t match up with Scripture… and so we have tended to steer away from the subject entirely.
• But, folks… the Holy Spirit is fundamental to our faith! We cannot ignore it and claim to be a Christian!
• Did you realize that the Holy Spirit is on almost every page of the Bible! My computer found 246 explicit references to the Spirit in the New Testament ALONE! That doesn’t even include however many more indirect references there may be!
There is no doubt: Holy Spirit is fundamental to our faith!
• There are a lot of things I DON’T know about the Holy Spirit… in fact you could probably fill the oceans full with things I don’t understand about God... I think there are some things we CAN know.
• And I don’t want to get into the realm of speculation or to veer outside the bounds of Scripture this morning… but the Bible does have a lot to say about the Spirit.
• So, while there is much I DON’T know… there are some things I CAN know…
One, the Holy Spirit is God’s Promise to Always Be With Us!
(Turn to John 14) In Matt. 28:20, just as Jesus is about to ascend back into Heaven following his resurrection you remember what he told his disciples? “And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.”
• Ever think that was an odd thing to say? I mean, just how was he planning to do this? He’s about to leave them, right? How was he going to be with them when he was going to be so far away?
• Its because he knew that God was about to send his Spirit to be with them.
He had told them that back in John 14:15-18
15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to 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. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. NIV
People always want to know, “What does the Holy Spirit DO?”
• At least one function is implied by the use of the word “counselor” or “comforter” here. The word is parakletos and it simply means, “one who comes up alongside for the purpose of giving aid, comfort, counsel.”
o Doesn’t it feel good to have somebody by your side especially when you’re going through a tough time? Doesn’t it help to know that you’re not alone, that you’ve got somebody in your corner, holding your hand no-matter-what?
o Whether its sitting in a hospital waiting room waiting on the doctors to come out and tell you how surgery went… or maybe you’re facing a difficult problem in your marriage… or having a difficult time with your kids… doesn’t it help to feel like somebody is there by your side.
o THAT’S the role of His Holy Spirit! He is “God by our side.”
• “…he will be with you and will be in you.” Jesus promises.
o However others have understood the notion of the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit” this is what the Bible says: He lives IN us.
o Paul bases his ethics on this principle in a number of places like 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19. He says, since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, then we ought not abuse or misuse it… especially when it comes to sexual sin. Because the Spirit of God lives in us.
I’m afraid that many of us have a view of the Holy Spirit that he came, did a lot of neat stuff with the apostles in the first century and then left… or at least stopped doing his thing.
• I don’t see that anywhere in Scripture! If we’re going to be conservative with the Bible, then we need to honestly look at what it says.
• I see here in John 14 where the Spirit is promised. Over in Acts 2, I see the fulfillment of that promise. The Spirit came with great power on the Day of Pentecost… but nowhere after that do I see that he left and went anywhere!
• Just the opposite, in fact! Look again at Jn 14:16. Jesus promises that this counselor will be with us “forever.”
So, is the Spirit active today? What did Peter preach on that day of Pentecost back in Acts 2?
"Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. NIV
• We refer to this passage a lot today to emphasize the necessity of repentance and baptism for forgiveness of sins, right? (Yes, & rightly so.)
• But notice the point of what Peter is saying. Repentance & baptism aren’t the point. They are the means to the point. The result is the gift of the Holy Spirit. That’s the point!
• So, Peter, are you telling me that when I turn from my sins and when I am baptized into Christ then I, too, will receive this gift of the Holy Spirit? YOU BET! Isn’t that how we’ve always understood this text?
Then, why do so many Christians effectively live “as if we’d never heard there IS a Holy Spirit?” This is what I mean…
There’s a lot I don’t know about the H.S. but the second thing I DO know is that when he comes in to your life… he’s not going to be content to just sit there! He gets to work!
• We’ve got some friends that live in Indiana now, but we used to live 5 minutes apart and Brian, my buddy, is this way. When he & his wife would come over, he was never content to just sit there… he had to be doing something. This was wonderful for me! He helped me with countless projects around the house—digging a walkway in the backyard, pressure washing my deck so I could seal it, hauling mulch, etc. It was also good for his wife, Gina, who would get tired of him spending money on projects at their house, so she would send him over to ours. Now, I have no problem just sitting there… but NOT Brian!
• And NOT the Holy Spirit! When he comes in to take up residence in our lives, in our temple… he isn’t going to be content to just sit there and let things be just as they always have been! He’s going to come in and start some major home improvement!
This is what is meant by the word: sanctification. It is the process of God at work in your life, making you more holy, more righteous… better than you were. (it doesn’t happen overnight.. it is a process.)
• And it is always the work of the Holy Spirit.
o Romans 15:16 “…to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” NIV
o 1 Corinthians 6:11 “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” NIV
• Note in those texts that sanctification and the Holy Spirit are directly linked. I.e. its NOT YOU! The Holy Spirit does the work of sanctification… of taking you from who you used to be and making you who God wants you to be. (Now, you’ve got to be a willing participant. He doesn’t make you do something you aren’t willing to do, but ultimately the work of sanctification is that of the Spirit of God.)
• We do NOT have it within us to be the people God wants us to be. We don’t have that power or ability. If we did, then why would Jesus have had to come and die on the cross? If we could have achieved righteousness on our own, why would Jesus have had to come?
• It is ONLY through the sanctifying work of the Spirit that we are changed.
• Yet I know so many who have put that whole heap of responsibility on themselves… and then feel guilty because they can’t be good enough.
o I know some have put off being baptized because they feel the need to get their lives in order first. Folks, you’ve got it backwards!
o Only God gives the power to get your lives in order and if you don’t have his Spirit in your life, you’ll NEVER get there on your own! You can’t do it without the Spirit of God!
Folks, God didn’t just do what he did so that we could be forgiven of our sins… but so that we could be given the power to get out of our sins.
• This is where I think a lot of us miss the point of the Holy Spirit.
• The Holy Spirit gives us the power to resist and overcome the pull and the temptation of sin!
• It is no longer our master and we don’t have to fall into its trap… because we’ve got the Spirit of God within us!
• If you have found yourself battered and beaten up by the same sin over & over again… maybe its because you’ve not asked the Holy Spirit to do his thing!
o Maybe its because you’ve not let the Holy Spirit truly come in and clean house!
• Have you been resisting the Spirit’s work in your life? Home renovation isn’t easy… sometimes it can be painful! Sometimes things that have been there for a long time have to come out. And it hurts.
• Removing sin from our lives might be painful… and we may resist it, but that’s what the Holy Spirit wants to do… NOT to hurt you, but to heal you!
o Maybe its because you’ve been trying to do it all by yourself and you’ve neglected the fact that God is right there by your side wanting to help you all along?
The pipes under this guy’s house all of a sudden sprung a leak, and so he did what we all do, he called a plumber. When the plumber arrived, the man said, “No need to get your tools out of your truck. I just want you by my side. But I know what to do.” The man slapped his own tool belt around his waist (with a hammer, some duct tape and a little chewing gum in it) and together they headed for the basement. For the next two hours the plumber watched as the man twisted and pulled and glued and duct-taped and hammered… never asking for help, never asking for direction, never asking for even a hand from the plumber. When it was all said and done, the plumber climbed back in his truck, thanked the man for his business and went off without ever being allowed to do that which he came to do. And the owner of the house smiled and waved as the waters continued to rise.
• Sound ridiculous? Yeah. Yet, how many of us are guilty of treating the Holy Spirit of God the same way?
• We acknowledge his presence. (We even called him to our side when we were baptized.) We appreciate the fact that he’s right there by our side… but we never ask him to do anything.
Finally, this morning, Galatians 5:22-25
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. NIV
• How do you know if you are being sanctified by the Spirit?
• These things will increasingly become characteristics of your life? You may never master them, but you’ll grow in them.
• Wouldn’t you like for your life to be characterized by these kinds of things? When we live by the Spirit and walk in step with the Spirit, then this is the result.
Have you heard that there is a Holy Spirit?
Did you know that when you turn from your sin and are immersed into Jesus Christ then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit?
And did you know that he wants to change your life? Won’t you let him?
