Holy Spirit Lecture. Tuesday Men's
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Who is the Holy Spirit?
What does the Holy Spirit do?
1906 – the son of freed slaves, a one-eye preacher William Seymour came and preached at a church in L.A. California. After he heard the preaching of a Methodist, Charles Parham, evangelist, in Kansas
He began preaching on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. After 1 sermon, he was locked out of the church. He found a house to begin preaching and fasting and praying for God to do a new thing on Azusa Street. For God to awaken the people of the church. The Holy Spirit began to fill people in powerful ways. L.A. Times reports:
“Weird Babble of Tongues, New Sect of Fanatics Breaking Loose, Wild Scene Last Night on Azusa Street, Gurgle of Wordless talk by a Sister.”
People began to prophecy and speak in angelic tongues. Healings took place, reports of a man with no arm being prayed for and his arm growing back. Lifelong illnesses cured. Many many miracles. The revival lasted almost 10 years and was the birth of the Pentecostal church. They sent missionaries around the world and you can trace flourishing Christianity from all over Latin America and Africa to this 1900 revival.
Separate revivals like the Welsh revival, September 1904 to June 1905 and witnessed over ten thousand people come to Christ.
A few years later, revivals broke out in Korea, current day North Korea....Korean Pentecost.
Welsh missionaries went to India
China, Africa including Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Nigeria
Asuza Street jumped to 25 countries in 2 years
The affirmation that unites Pentecostals is the belief and exercise of spiritual gifts as exhibited in the book of Acts should be normative for the church today.
A renewal movement fundamentally the believe in the following:
Full range of gifts and miraculous manifestations of the Spirit found in the New Testament
A new emphasis on the practice of worship
An urgency of evangelism because they believe they are living in the last days before Christ’s return
Pentecostals now make up 600 million throughout the world but has also influenced the world with renewal.
Tennent: Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-first Century
Starting on page 411
Holy Spirit empowers the Church for global mission
Holy Spirit empowers the Church for global mission
Prior to the ascension, Jesus tells the disciples to waint until they have been “baptized with the holy Spirit.”
5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
and then they will....
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
10 days later, the day of pentecost. The Spirit dramatically descends in a violent wind and with fire. Which of two of the central images of the presence of God in the Old Testament.
Flames of fire:
Flames of fire:
First the image of moses
2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.
and the pillar of fire that protected and guided the people in the wilderness....
21 By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.
22 Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.
and Yahweh’s descent onto Mount Sinai in fire with the giving of the Law....
18 Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.
(remember, Pentecost is when the Israelites celebrated the giving of the law).
The Wind:
The Wind:
The breath of God which gave life at creation....
7 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
or the manifest presence of God to the prophets....
11 The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal,
3 The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet.
Empowered for mission at Pentecost
Empowered for mission at Pentecost
Disciples begin to speak in other tongues. This is more than a sociological event that allows for foreign visitors to understand....this is a reversing of the tower of babel.
What happens at the tower of babel?
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
This reversal is a theological statement whereby God is taking the initiative to overcome this chaos and empowers the church for global mission of redemption to the ends of the earth. Now the gospel is for all nations.
Holy Spirit endues the Church with God’s authority
Holy Spirit endues the Church with God’s authority
Not every empowering of the Spirit in the book of acts is just for witnessing but actually guiding and directing the church.
For example in Acts 6 deacons are filled with the Holy Spirit to serve the church.
Paul gives farewell to the leaders in Ephesus and states that it was the Holy Spirit that chose them....
28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.
Again, in Acts 11 Agabus is filled with the Holy Spirit to inform the church of a famine....
27 During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.
28 One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.)
Later in Acts 15 the Holy Spirit directs the church in their decision on Gentiles
28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:
Tim Tennent: “The Holy Spirit conveys revelation to the church by communicating to the church the will of God, thereby helping to bring the church under the authority of Christ.”
The Holy Spirit extends the inbreaking of the New Creation through the powerful manifestation of signs and wonders and holiness of life
The Holy Spirit extends the inbreaking of the New Creation through the powerful manifestation of signs and wonders and holiness of life
In Peter’s sermon he quotes Joel and talks about signs and wonders....
19 I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke.
Luke records....
43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.
Apostles and others in Acts experienced the work of signs and wonders:
8 Now Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people.
and Phillip....
Acts 8:6; 13
13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.
Signs and wonders accompanied the preaching and confirmed the work of God in their midst, for example...
30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
and finally,
3 So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders.
The Spirit is also the calling of holiness not just mission and evangelism.
Tennent:
“The same Spirit who empowers us for witness is the one who empowers us for holy living. The same Spirit who transforms the unbelieving nations of the world is the one who transforms hearts, teaching us to say no to sin and to embrace the righteousness of Jesus Christ.”
Is this descriptive or prescriptive?
Is this descriptive or prescriptive?
Ask the question out loud....
Ministry of Jesus through the Spirit:
(Ecumenical statement of belief on the Holy Spirit as found in Seamnads book, Ministry in the image of God
Through love, the Holy Spirit orients the whole life of Jesus towards the Father in the fulfillment of his will. The Father sends his Son (Gal 4:4) when Mary conceives him through the operation of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). The Holy Spirit makes Jesus manifest as Son of the Father by resting upon him at baptism (Luke 3:21-22; John 1:33). He drives Jesus into the wilderness (see Mark 1:12). Jesus returns “full of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1). Then he begins his ministry “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14). He is filled with joy in the Spirit, blessing the Father for his gracious will (Luke 10:21). He chooses his apostles “through the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:2). He casts out demons by the Spirit of God (Matt 12:28). He offers himself to the Father “through the eternal Spirit” (Heb 9:14). On the cross he “commits his Spirit” into the Father’s hands (Luke 23:46). “In the Spirit” he descended to the dead (1 Pet 3:19), and by the Spirit he was raised from the dead (Rom 8:11) and “designated Son of God in power” (Rom 1:4).
And scriptural witness is that we are to go out in the Spirit.
What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?
I like Steve Seamands commentary here:
What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Although it is a spatial metaphor, being filled with the Spirit is not really about space, like filling up a cup of water. We will be misled if we conceive of it that way. Essentially this metaphor describes a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit characterized by surrender and abandonment to the Spirit. For though the Holy Spirit is present in all believers, in some he is not preeminent; though he is resident in all, in some he is not president. That is why Paul exhorts believers who already have a relationship with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13) to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).
Richard Neuhaus says, “It is our determination to be independent by being in control that makes us unavailable to God.” Those who are filled with the Spirit have died to that determination, surrendered their right to be in control, and made themselves radically dependent on and available to the Holy Spirit. They have deliberately abandoned themselves to the Holy Spirit.
Only through such a relationship with the Holy Spirit are we enabled and empowered to participate in the ongoing ministry of Jesus and to discern what the Father wants us to do. Ministry, if it is to be fruitful—not merely productive—must be through the Holy Spirit. As E. Stanley Jones warns, “Unless the Holy Spirit fills, the human spirit fails.”