-We’re going to take our eyes off of the spooky and the sensational for a moment, we’re going to change our focus from the eerie and evil forces of darkness, and we’re going to turn our attention instead to the person and work of God’s Holy Spirit.
• From the outset of this message, I want to acknowledge the fact that there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding when it comes to the third member of the trinity.
• Most Christians have a fairly good understanding and appreciation for the person and work of God the Father, whose plan and designs cover the entirety of the Old Testament Scrptures.
• We also have a pretty solid grasp, concerning God the Son, Jesus Christ, who came to earth to die for us and to pay the penalty for our sins. His life is covered in great detail all throughout the Gospels and the book of Acts.
• However, when it comes to person and work of the Holy Spirit, many of us find that we don’t really understand who the Holy Spirit is, what His role in God’s plan is, and why He is so vitally important to our daily spiritual walk today.
We’re going to take our eyes off of the spooky and the sensational for a moment, we’re going to change our focus from the eerie and evil forces of darkness, and we’re going to turn our attention instead to the person and work of God’s Holy Spirit. From the outset of this message, I want to acknowledge the fact that there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding when it comes to the third member of the Trinity.
• Most Christians have a fairly good understanding and appreciation for the person and work of God the Father, whose plan and designs cover the entirety of the Old Testament Scrptures.
• We also have a pretty solid grasp, concerning God the Son, Jesus Christ, who came to earth to die for us and to pay the penalty for our sins. His life is covered in great detail all throughout the Gospels and the book of Acts.
• However, when it comes to person and work of the Holy Spirit, many of us find that we don’t really understand who the Holy Spirit is, what His role in God’s plan is, and why He is so vitally important to our daily spiritual walk today.
The personal experience of God’s Holy Spirit is one of the greatest distinguishing marks of Christianity!
There are many religious ideas and notions out in the world today…There is a huge smorgasbord of beliefs from which to choose from…Whether you realize it or not, many non-Christian religions actually do say some really good things (though they are only partially true). Many of them have high moral standards for their adherents to follow…A few of them emphasize the existence of one true God. Others even claim to have some form of a trinity. Some even present a means to salvation in one form or another…But understand this…No other religion, outside of Christianity, offers anything like the HOLY SPIRIT!
- All other religions leave their people to do in their own strength and power the good things that are asked of them…
- All other religions expect people to try and lift themselves out of the mire by their own bootstraps and to pick themselves up by their own belt buckles!
- ONLY CHRISTIANITY, gives us the person, power and anointing of the Holy Spirit to cleanse, transform and empower us to become the kind of people that Scripture instructs and commands us to become!
According to Scripture, the Holy Spirit is more than just an essence. He is more than a supernatural power or a manifestation of God’s energy, and He is more than what the KJV so inadequately describes as some sort of “holy” ghost-like being. The truth of the matter is that the Holy Spirit is a person, with a personality and a will. And as such, He cooperates in perfect unity and with complete harmony to carry out the divine will of both God the Father and God the Son.
Now what makes the Holy Spirit so unique for us, is the simple, yet incredible fact, that He provides the point of contact between us and God.
- He is the point at which the Holy and mysterious Trinity becomes personal and real in the life of the believer.
- For it is through the Spirit that we are allowed to EXPERIENCE the work of God in our lives.
- It is He that provides the tangible, experiential, and utterly transformational means for us to understand, obey, and follow God’s plan!
If you look at how the Holy Spirit has moved upon people throughout the Scriptures in both the OT & the NT, you will see very clearly that those who encountered Him, knew Him in a definite and personal way…
- If you were to ask Samuel, Elijah or Isaiah whether or not they experienced the power of the Holy Spirit when He came upon them, they would respond in the affimative, as it was the Spirit who gave them the prophetic words to utter which challenged and changed people’s lives for the Lord…
- If you were to ask one of the Judges (Gideon, Samson, or Deborah) whether or not they experienced the power of the HS when He came upon them, not one of them would pause and question whether it had taken place…not one of them would say “I’m not sure,’ or ‘I really don’t know,’ for it was through the Spirit’s power and anointing that they were able to route armies, conquer evil nations and turn the hearts of God’s people back to Him!
- If you were to ask King Saul whether or not he had experienced the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit, he would tell you the same thing. When the Spirit came upon him he prophesied, and scripture declares that “he became a different man.”
All of these OT saints would affirm that the HS is real. That He is divine. That encountering His presence and power was a life-altering experience for each of them. However, their ability to experience the HS was limited. It wasn’t until the NT that the Spirit was allowed to remain in the life of a believer…IN the New Testament, however, a new era of the Spirit is birthed, a time of activity among men which was prophesied from the days of old when God’s spirit would be poured out upon all flesh.
- It all began when He descended upon Jesus in the physical form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism and He remained upon Him throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry.
- The sound of a mighty rushing wind and cloven tongues of fire heralded His presence among the 120 gathered on the Day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.
- On three separate occasions in the book of Acts, when the Spirit came upon believers there, they were filled with His presence and began to speak in other tongues (Acts 2:4;10:46;19:6)
- Another time, the place where they were meeting was shaken and they all spoke the Word of God with boldness! (Acts 9:31)
And because of His influence, the supernatural became a regular part of the life of the early church, as they quickly recognized their constant need for His presence in their lives and meetings…
None of these individuals ever had to guess whether or not the Holy Spirit was living and active in their lives, for without a doubt,THEY ALL KNEW IT! They felt it, they experienced it, and the evidence of the Spirit’s touch upon their lives was evident to everyone with whom they came into contact – for their lives were dramatically transformed!
When we think of people who have been filled with the Holy Spirit, our minds often roam to the eccentric, to the far left extreme of the Charismatic movement. We think of people in estactic states of worship being slain in the spirit, dancing in the spirit, rolling down the aisles or hanging haphazardly from the chandeliers. We think of extreme manifestations, loud shouting, tongue talking, revival-type behavior -things that either attract you to Pentecostal/Charismatic circles or quickly repel you.
But , in reality, the person we should be thinking about is Jesus! For He is the PERFECT example of what a spirit-filled man looks like and acts like! He is our role model for what can happen when we submit our lives to the power and control of the Holy Spirit in our lives on a daily basis!
After all, it was at His baptism when the Spirit descended upon Him and enabled him to overcome the temptations He faced in the desert. Though Jesus was divine, He didn’t use His divine power to defeat the enemy. Rather, identifying himself as a spirit-filled man, He defeated Satan by the same means that are available to us today – the Word of God and the bold, fresh power of the Spirit.
We must keep in mind the reason why Jesus needed the baptism in the Spirit – it wasn’t just so He could perform miracles and cast out demons – according to John 3:34,35, He was filled with the HS WIHTOUT MEASURE so that He could do all that God had sent Him to accomplish. It was the power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus which gave His teaching such impact, it was the Holy Spirit that enabled him to heal the lame and to cause the blind to see. It was the Holy Spirit who aided Him in living a sinless, perfect life as a human man.
Think about it…if Jesus needed the help and the power of the Holy Spirit to daily accomplish God’s will through His life, how much more do we need it? How much more urgently do we need to cry out after this precious gift so that we can begin living out God’s will for our lives today?
Didn’t Jesus say that we’d be doing even greater things than He did? If so, we’ll certainly need the power of the HS to accomplish it!!!!
I don’t know if you realize it or not – I certainly hope you do by now—but it is IMPOSSIBLE for us to live the way Scripture commands us to live APART from the Holy Spirit’s help! We can’t overcome our sinful and fleshly desires without inviting His power to indwell us and to change us from the inside out. Hard work and sweat won’t cut it. Will power alone will NEVER be enough to do the trick…
Fully aware of this fact, just before Jesus ascended into Heaven, He took the time to tell his disciples about the gift He would be sending in His place. It was the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In John 14:16 he said, “I will ask the Father and He will give you another Comforter… I will not leave you as orphans, I will not leave you comfortless.”
A comforter, a helper, an advocate, a teacher, and a guide. The Holy Spirit is all of those things! He is the personal presence of God in our lives who is more than adequate to meet all of our needs!
In fact, the secret to the success of Pentecostal people and the Pentecostal Movement is our recognition that we are not self-sufficient, but are rather TOTALLY DEPENDANT upon the Holy Spirit to help us carry out God’s will.
Listen to how Jesus describes the role of the HS in our lives. He said the Spirit would:
TEACH US –
- Just as Jesus had taught His disciples, so now the HS would do the same.
- His role is to remind us of what Jesus has repeatedly said in the Word, and assisting us in applying those truths to our lives.
Jesus also said the HS would GUIDE US INTO ALL TRUTH–
- The picture here is that of a guide or escort leading a traveler into territory unfamiliar to the traveler but very familiar to the guide.
- This gives us hope as we travel along the often mysterious paths of God’s will, that if we adhere to the Spirit’s leading, we can be certain that we will arrive at our appointed destination. (AMEN?)
- And for those times when Scripture isn’t clear or doesn’t make sense, we can be certain the Spirit will illuminate the Words He inspired the biblical authors to write and that He will allow its truth to penetrate deep into our hearts.
Jesus also said that the HS would CONVICT THE WORLD OF SIN.
- To convict means ‘to convince someone of something’; ‘to point something out to someone’ that they might not see.
- In this regard, the HS acts like a divine prosecutor showing us the error of our sinful ways, even when we don’t necessarily want to see it, so that we can be brought back to repentance and not have our relationship with Christ disrupted or hampered due to hidden or unforseen sin.
Jesus also said that the Holy Spirit would PURIFY US.
- One of His primary activities is to bring new, regenerated life to believers.
- His job is to assist us so that we can be cleansed from our sin and be made holy, just as God the Father is holy. Theologians calls this “sanctification;” it is a process whereby we become more and more like Jesus through the daily, active power of the Holy Spirit. It is the process of us learning to DAILY WALK in the SPIRIT and to live according to His divine direction. For it takes more than a one time dip in the powerful stream of the Holy Spirit to gain victory over the power of sin in our lives. It takes continually living and walking in the Spirit, allowing the spirit full control over our lives so that we learn how to overcome and defeat the desires of our flesh.
After all, the point of spirit baptism is sanctification – it’s not supernatural manifestations! If there is one pet peeve I have about the Pentecostal/ Charismatic movement of which I am apart, it is this: We seem to care more about chasing after the latest HS trends, desiring the latest outward physical manifestation of His presence, than we care about living holy, consecrated lives!
And if you don’t mind, I’m just going to say it bluntly – I don’t care how often you speak in tongues, I don’t care how many times you have been slain in the spirit, or have had a supernatural manifestation in your life, if you’re not completely changed and made more holy after it is all said and done, you have wasted your time and energy on fleshly endeavors!
The point of being filled with the spirit is not experiential bliss, it is holiness, backed up with the proof of a changed and transformed life. And if you haven’t gotten the hint yet, changed lives are what it’s all about according to Scripture!
Don’t get me wrong – I am not discouraging you from being filled and enjoying the Spirit’s presence and power in your life, in fact I encourage it, I simply don’t want you to miss the point of what your experience with the Spirit is intended to give you.
Posted in Growing in Christ, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Maturity, The Gospel, Theology
Tags: Holy Spirit, Jesus, Port City Assembly, Spirit Baptism, Supernatural manifestations, the purpose of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, Tom J. Grazioso
