Holy Spirit
- Jake Chambers
- Mar 21, 2010
- Series: SDSU
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. –Ephesians 1:13-14
These are the final pieces of Paul’s long run on sentence, which is packed with truths about God and his gospel. This run on sentence illuminates a Trinitarian perspective on the gospel. He opens with God the Father's plan for our salvation, then explores how God the Son accomplishes this work on the cross and ends with God the Holy Spirit applying this work to our lives, guaranteeing our salvation. Today I want to focus on God the Holy Spirit and what this applying of the work looks like and why we should crave it, desire it and plead for it.
These passages in Ephesians are talking about something grand happening to the believer upon belief. This is not merely an intellectual decision that comes upon hearing the apologetic argument for Christ, but is primarily a new life given by the power of the Holy Spirit that is working when the word of God is heard and believed. This is talking and speaking of something much grander than a religious choice on a check box but is talking of a guarantee, a sealing and this sealing coming from God the Holy Spirit. A guarantee from God.
What is going on?
Regeneration: Ezekiel 36:26-27, Ezekiel 37:1-14 “I shall place my Spirit in you and you shall live”. Regeneration is the act of being born again. A heart that was a cold dead stone is now a warm, blood pumping chunk of flesh. A valley of dry bones has life breathed into them. It is new life given by the Holy Spirit. Just how the Spirit breathed life into Adam in the garden when all was good and perfect he once again breaths life into these dry bones. The fulfillment of this prophesy is for the church, who was once spiritually dead but now has life! We are only going to look briefly at this today and we will talk about it more in depth throughout the book of Ephesians, but I do want to introduce to you the doctrine of Regeneration. This is doctrine of the work of the cross, the blood shed by Christ being applied to our life by the power of the Holy Spirit. John speaks of it as being “born again.”
Being “born again” is not a simple label or about us praying a prayer or signing an agreement or following an alter call. Although that may very well have been part of our experience upon being “born again,” but we must see that this regeneration is all about the Holy Spirit indwelling us and breathing new life into us. This new heart, new mind and new life empowers us to finally live for Christ and finally live the life we were created to live.
With regeneration comes new desires led by the Holy Spirit. So we now want to do what we once never wanted to do. People who were greedy are now generous. People who were cheaters now desire to be faithful. People who were arrogant now pursue humility. Mind you, we are not perfect. The old desires still war with us and tempt us but if our hearts are regenerate we have a deeper desire. A desire to obey and glorify Christ. This new deeper desire guarantees that our hearts have been changed and guarantees our inheritance. Follow these new desires and let these desires live and breathe.
I wanted to give this brief intro on regeneration, but for the remainder of our time I want us to see what we are missing out on by not living by the Spirit. My prayer is that over the coming months we will grow as a church in our theology of the Holy Spirit and our understanding of regeneration. But today I want us to beg for the Spirit to rule our lives, our church and to move among us. And this not to be some freaky, over the top Benny Hinn video but a real longing for the Spirit to move.
Misconceptions: The first misconception of the Holy Spirit is that he is the only member of the Trinity. That all of our gatherings and times together should be all about the Holy Spirit all of the time. This has lead people to talk incessantly of the Holy Spirit, focus only on the Spirit and even take gifts of the Spirit like tongues and physical healings and considers them to be the only true marks of salvation and of a true believer.
Acts 2 gives a clear example that this is not the focus of God the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not come to bring attention to him self but comes as the counselor and helper who applies the work of Christ and gives us a new heart and new ability to point to the work of Christ. We see this done remarkably when Peter is now able to boldly speak of Christ in front of thousands, when without the Holy Spirit, he would not place himself on the same team as Jesus even in front of a middle school girl. The Spirit allows us wimps to all of the sudden have the ability to talk about Jesus! We also see in 1 Corinthians 13 that the primary gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of love. A new ability to love God and to love people. This new ability is what creates this Acts 2:42-47 community. If you want to know if your heart has been regenerate just ask yourself if you love Jesus. Do you love Jesus? We have no ability to love Jesus without the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
I am not talking about a love for Jesus the hippie, or the nice teacher or the prophet. Lots of people would say they love that Jesus and they love whatever Jesus they have made up to love. It does not take the Holy Spirit to love hippie Jesus it just takes a medical marijuana disepensary. The real question is do you love the Jesus that claims to be God? The only way to heaven, the forgiver of sins, the one who lovingly died for us and conquered sin and death. Do you love the God of the Bible our Lord Jesus Christ? If you love that Jesus your heart is regenerate and you will have new desires to obey this Jesus as Lord. For this Jesus has said “if you love me then you will obey me.” This is the guarantee of our salvation. Hearts that once did not love Jesus, hearts that once were disinterested in Jesus, hearts that once thought they could earn his love through obedience, or hearts that once ran from obedience have been transformed. And now these once dead hearts have been made new and have longing to know Jesus, to love Jesus, to walk with Jesus, to follow Jesus, to obey Jesus, to sing to Jesus and sing about Jesus. This is regeneration. This is the guarantee of our salvation that the Holy Spirit has moved our hearts to love the one we once hated! And with that love came a new ability to love others.
The second misconception is that the Holy Spirit is so mysterious that we should leave him out all together. We should not think about him, learn about him, or desire any of his power or effect in our life because then something weird might happen and we would be like the charismatics. This is an equally if not more damaging misconception. And I want to show how the Bible radically and emphatically fights this misconception.
John 16:7 It is to our advantage that Jesus leaves and the Holy Spirit comes. This is crazy. This utterly crushes the earlier misconception. How can this be? Because the God man, Jesus, walked beside the disciples but God the Holy Spirit will indwell and lead Jesus’ disciples. This is radically astounding yet we don’t often sit in awe of this truth.
Romans 8:13 The Holy Spirit puts to death our sinful flesh. We try so hard to do this on our own but it is the Spirit that can do this, not ourselves. Sin and the Spirit go together like a cat and a bathtub. It just doesn’t mix. Galatians 5 talks of this. It is like oil and water no matter how much you try to mix it together, it will stay separate. But the Holy Spirit has the power and ability to put to death our flesh, our sin. Don’t you see how badly we need the Holy Spirit to free us from the slavery of our addictions, sinful thoughts, patterns and behavior? Trying to be a Christian without the Holy Spirit is like a dude wearing a speedo. It is awkward, uncomfortable for everybody, wrong and no matter how hard you try it just isn’t working.
Acts 4:29-34 We see two things happening as a result of people being led and empowered by the Holy Spirit. We see people speaking with great boldness about Jesus Christ and the church being incredibly generous. They are good stewards of all that God has given them and they care for each other so that no one has a need.
Without the Holy Spirit we are paralyzed by fear of man, like Peter was, and cannot share the gospel. Without the Holy Spirit we struggle to look outside of ourselves and meet the needs of others. But with the Holy Spirit working through us we can speak with great boldness and grow in selflessness and generosity. And look how powerfully these two things will work together to glorify Christ.
We wonder why the church has been dying in America? Why Christianity has been slowly suffocating here in America? Why we don’t speak more boldly, why we are called hypocrites because we have no victory over sin, why we don’t care for one another and have a community that selflessly cares for one another? Why so many churches have plateuad and are dying? It is because we have believed this misconception that we should ignore the Holy Spirit. So many churches and Christians have ignored, quieted and forgotten the Holy Spirit. Francis Chan in his newest book titled it “Forgotten God.” The church in America has forgotten God the Holy Spirit. I plead with us not to forget the Holy Spirit. We are missing out on having the work of the cross being applied to our lives. John Piper wrote a book on the Holy Spirit titled “Finally Alive.” I recommend both these books that are very readable and great theologies of the Holy Spirit. But in both books they are pleading with Christians to not forget God the Holy Spirit.
What happens when we forget the Holy Spirit? Acts 4:13 If there is one word I would use to describe the book of Acts it would be this word “astonishing.” The church is living a life empowered by the Holy Spirit and it is absolutely astonishing. When we forget the Holy Spirit we live lives that look like everybody else. Without the power of God indwelling, leading and empowering us, our lives are absolutely average and normal. And the tragedy is that we have the ability to walk in the Spirit to have the power of the cross actively applied to our lives, and we settle for so much less. We quiet the Spirit when it prompts us to talk to someone about Jesus. We don’t beg for the Spirit to change and transform us. We settle for reading the Bible as duty instead of asking the Spirit to bring the book to life and speak to us. And in some cases we ignore the words of God all together.
We must stop settling. We must stop missing out on this life that God has empowered us to live!
The Holy Spirit is God and God can lead us, and God can indwell us, and God can empower us and God can transform us, and God can use us, and God can free us from sin, and God can give us courage, and God can give us assurance, and yet we settle for doing it on our own!!! How are we not asking for the Holy Spirit to reign and rule and empower our lives? We settle for far less and God wants to give us more.
I am not talking of asking for Rolexes and health, wealth and prosperity, I am talking of asking for the Holy Spirit to lead us and empower us to conquer sin, walk in the light and bear fruit. I am talking of asking the Spirit to move over the valley of dry bones we call SDSU, we call College Area, we call your office, family and classroom. To move over your neighborhood and to breathe life into them! How are we not begging a God who can take dead hearts and pump them full of Christ's blood to do such a thing? We are settlers! We should be constantly astonished and live lives that are astonishing because our God is astonishing and astonishingly he dwells in us!
I don’t want us to leave here and try harder to beat our addictions. I don’t want us to leave here and try to muster up the courage to speak to people about Jesus. I want us to leave here begging the Holy Spirit to fill us and move us, and to leave here with a new commitment to listen to the Spirits nudging, voice and leading. To not quiet every little thing he is asking us to do, to not ignore his promptings but to be led by him. If we listen to the Spirit, follow the Spirit and give the Spirit room to move in our lives then we are going to need to fasten our seat belts and hold on because we will be living a life empowered by God himself. This is a life I want to live. I don’t want us to merely believe in our minds the work of the cross I want us to allow that work to be applied and let it loose in our lives!
Now some of you may be feeling guilty. Like you have squashed the Spirit's leading. You will ignore the Spirit again. We all will. But Christ was born of the Spirit, led by the Spirit into the wilderness, baptized by the Spirit and he lived the most perfectly astonishing life a man has ever and will ever live. Where we failed to live by the Spirit and bring glory to God, Jesus Christ our Savior lived that life for us. And where we ignored the Spirit and squashed it and chose selfishness and our flesh over the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ died our death for us. This is good news. Jesus lived perfectly by the Holy Spirit for us so that we are still acceptable in God’s eyes when we do not. Christ our Savior died on the cross so He could send the Holy Spirit to lead and indwell us. Rejoice in this that there is one who always listened, followed and walked by the Spirit. And rejoice in this that this chosen one chose to ask his Father to send us the Holy Spirit, knowing that we would still at times live lives that would require him to go to the cross. Christ wanted us to live by the Spirit so much, he was willing to die for it. Take comfort church. Our assurance is in Christ and our guarantee has been sealed by the regenerating gift of the Holy Spirit!
Luke 11:5-13 I have more good news for us. We may have not been living astonishing, generous, sin conquering, Spirit led lives. We may not be seeing valleys of dry bones come to life in front of our very own eyes. But Jesus and God our Father invites and encourages us to ask the Holy Spirit to come and do just that. To do that in us and all around us.
I want to call us as a church to have a single-minded focus on prayer this week. We are going to do only one thing in MC as we get together this week. We are going to get together and pray. Pray for the Holy Spirit to move in one another’s lives and in our own lives and to move in College Area. One week dedicated to prayer for the Holy Spirit to move among us. I challenge you to not just do this in MC though, but to find time alone, find time to pull people aside, find time on lunch breaks, early mornings, text each other prayers, e-mail each other prayers, Facebook prayers, pray with people, pray alone, pray at home and pray on the phone. Have people over this week not just to play Wii or eat a good meal but to pray. I don’t want us to pray for riches, worldly comfort or stuff but to pray for souls to be regenerated and to live out of that regeneration. Pray for the miracle of hearts of stone to be given hearts of flesh. Ask our Father for the Holy Spirit to move in College Area. Let’s do this single-mindedly this week and I pray that this would begin a lifestyle of asking and listening to the prompts of the Holy Spirit. Of course if we are praying these prayers the Holy Spirit very well will answer, and his answer may call you to do something that will require boldness. I challenge us as a church to listen to the Spirit’s prompting and live bold lives and that would start this week. Not of our own power but of the comforting power of God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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