I Believe - Holy Spirit

I Believe: Living the Catechized Life

Holy Spirit

Series Slide

Good morning and welcome to worship on this amazing day that the Lord has made! If you haven’t driven by the 11th street side of the church, you need to take a look at the playground!

Playground Image

We had a team of volunteers show up Monday and transformed the playground into an oasis, as the Pre-School Teachers were coming back to work. What was once a dingy playground with wood mulch growing fungus and fire ants’ habitats has become a sea of blue bouncy rubber.

Those of you that worked did not go unnoticed by the Pre-School staff and teachers who came and gave me a formal “THANK YOU.” You all were amazing and I can’t wait to see the playground covered in kidoes!

Today we are in our 3rdweek of our series “I Believe” where we are talking about living the catechized life! We started week 1 stated that:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is,

seen and unseen.

Last week we looked at Jesus and confirmed our understanding that:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being

with the Father; through Him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit

and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.

For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried. On

the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven and

is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and

the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.

That was a lot to cover in one week… and even though today’s part of the Nicene Creed is shorter, it is also more that we can adequately cover in one 20-30 minute sermon, but here we go!

This week, we are talking about the fact that:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and

the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken

through the prophets.

To start, let’s go to the birthday of the Church, Acts 1-2. You can flip over to Acts chapter 1 and we will bounce around in those chapters, but be ready to flip to a few other passages about the Holy Spirit before we get done today.

Acts 1:7-11

He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!”

So, Jesus is about to ascend into Heaven he tells his closest followers to wait for the Holy Spirit, and that through the Holy Spirit they will receive power. Then we flip over to Chapter 2 and find how the Holy Spirit Comes upon them:

Acts 2:1-4

On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

Let’s pray

Sermon Slide

We have a lot to unpack here. I think I’m going to break this down in three chunks for us.

1) Who is the Holy Spirit?

2) What difference does the Holy Spirit Make in our lives?

3) What is Fruitfulness with the Holy Spirit?

For the first question, Who is the Holy Spirit?

As stated in the Creed, The Holy Spirit is the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. That word “proceeds” means to continue, advance, progress, to keep going. The Holy Spirit is God, who continues, who advances, who progresses, who keeps the work of the Father and the Son going.

When we think of the Spirit, we can go back into the Old Testament and find that the Pneuma (the wind, the breath, the Spirit) was present at Creation. It was the Spirit that hovered over the waters as creation was coming into being, it was the Spirit that was breathed into humanity. We can go on into Isaiah 61 and find the words that Jesus quoted when he read Scripture in Nazareth, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor…”

The Holy Spirit was present as a part of the God-head at Creation. The Spirit spoke through the prophets, the Spirit moved in the lives of God’s people since creation, but today has been poured out in a new way.

Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as the comforter and the giver of wisdom.

It is through the Holy Spirit that we are able to grow into the likeness of Jesus. In fact, let’s look at Jesus words on the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives:

John 16:7-11

In our Catechism, the question is asked, “How does the Holy Spirit lead us to repentance?” This verse reminds us that it is the Holy Spirit that convinces us of sin, righteousness, and of judgement.

Romans 8:16 reminds us that The Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God.

And in these statements we are already answering the next question and point of today’s message.

What difference does the Holy Spirit make in our lives?

It is the Holy Spirit that works in us to convince us of our need for a savior. In the world of Methodism, we call this Prevenient Grace. John Wesley actually called it Preventing Grace, but, preventing has a different meaning now, to prevent is to keep from happening… so we changed used a different word, prevenient, now… it is a word that means ‘comes before.’ God’s grace comes before any action we take, it is the Holy Spirit working in us and through us, even before we recognize who God is.

But, God also moves in our lives and disrupts our lives. The Holy Spirit is about the business of disrupting our life, so that we can discover our life in God.

Going back to our passage in Acts. Jesus tells the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit, so there they are, huddled in the Upper Room in down town Jerusalem, worried about Roman Soldiers or the Jewish Temple Guards bursting into the room when what happens? The Holy Spirit comes busting in like a rushing wind… There’s that word, Pneuma, again… the same word for breath, wind, and spirit. You can’t experience the Holy Spirit and remain the same, Peter and the others, filled with the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit burst into the streets to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and they did it in an amazing way… They spoke in languages they did not know, but the people heard in the language of their heart. This wasn’t some speaking in angelic languages, this was a miracle of hearing in their native language and dialect… totally disrupting everything that was going on in Jerusalem that day.

And, when God bursts into our lives and disrupts everything that is calm and normal, we have 2 responses, just like the people in Jerusalem that day….

Acts 2:7-8 – How Can this Be?

Acts 2:13 – They are just drunk

Or, as J.D.Walt, Sower in Chief at Seedbed Publishing (really, that’s his title… they are all about sowing the seeds of the message of Christ, but that’s another point for another time)

“As it was then, so it is now. When the boundaries of one’s experience with God are stretched, it reveals two basic responses: self-abandonment or self-protection. The former marvels in stunned awe. The later mocks with sarcastic antagonism.”

Think back to when you heard about the spontaneous revival that happened at Asbury College this past year. What were your thoughts? It’s just a bunch of kids trying to get out of class? It’s just a phase, it’ll pass? They are being manipulated? It’s all for show?

Or,

Wow, Look at what God is doing? What would happen if God moved like that here? Did you pray, God bring revival here to Brownwood like you did in Wilmore, KY.

Every year, we Methodists gather for Annual Conference. This year’s Conference was in Waco last January… but, we didn’t want it to be called a conference, because we want it to be so much more than just a conference where a bunch of business meetings happen… We started with prayer… we prayed for the Holy Spirit to move… and during the week we saw God move in a mighty way, there were healings, there were people giving their lives to Christ, there were people called into ministry, the lives of the youth at a simultaneous camp were changed.

You know what some naysayers said about all this?

It’s just for show.

That isn’t really happening, it’s just for publicity.

It’s just people trying to make a name for themselves.

In his Wake-Up Call devotional, J.D. Walt told a story of a revival that took place in his town during his time in Seminary. They were a branch off the Jesus Movement that started at Calvary Chapel in Southern CA. There was all kind of supernatural phenomenology – healings, speaking in tongues, miracles… and it divided the community because some were amazed and perplexed, while others asked why they were drunk.

J.D. asked a professor who told him,

“J.D., there’s a lot happening here that is clearly of the Spirit, and yes, there are some things happening that are clearly being driven by human personality. Don’t be afraid of this. Lean into it with discernment.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, if we want to see revival in this church, in this community, in this region, then we have to get out of the way of the Holy Spirit… We need to be willing to step back and watch with awe and amazement, asking “How can this be?”

We need to be willing to pray the prayer found in our Communion Liturgy

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.

What difference does the Holy Spirit make in our lives? That depends on what difference you allow the Holy Spirit to make in your life.

And when you open yourself up to the movement of the Holy Spirit, we will then begin to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and that brings us to our final question:

What is Fruitfulness with the Holy Spirit?

We read in Acts that, upon being filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter began preaching the Word of God. These two fundamental truths are what unify us in our faith. These two resources enable us to be fruitful followers of Jesus Christ,

The Word of God

The Spirit of God.

Again, from J.D. Walts Wake-Up Call devotional this past week,

“One without the other leaves [us] in the state of arrested development known as fundamentalism. ON the one hand, the Word without the Spirit invariably moves toward a fundamentalism characterized by rigid legalism. On the other hand, the Spirit without the Word moves toward a fundamentalism characterized by unbridled chaos. The Word without Spirit counterfeits order. The Spirit without the Word counterfeit freedom. The truth: neither are either.”

Let me put this another way… God calls us to be fruitful, and it is the Holy Spirit that works in us to bear fruit.

Now, it bears saying, God called us to be fruitful, not fruity.

You’re not called to be fruit, you are to be fruitful.

You know what I mean by fruity Christians, right? There was a saying back in the 1980’s that you can be so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good. Right. A fruity Christian might be someone who uses all the religious language, has the Christian t-shirts on, puts a chrome fish on the back of their car, wears a cross the size of the one hanging in the Sanctuary around their neck… and then flips you off when your driving the speed limit on 377 to Comanche.

They either blame everything on God – “Well, it must have been God’s will that the tornado picked up your truck and put it on top of your house.”

“I know you’re really struggling with the death of your dog right now… God must have needed a new pet, but remember what the Word say’s, ‘Ol Shep will be in Heaven.”

“You know, you need to do this, because God wants you to be happy.”

That’s a fruity Christian, because God never said any of that and God never caused any of that.

A fruity Christian is someone who takes politics – I don’t care if they are democrat or republican, green, pink, or independent – and tries to tie Jesus to their political candidate’s platform.

I could go on into all kinds of issues, but I think you get the point.

The last thing we need is more fruity Christians… because fruity Christians aren’t building the Kingdom of God, or helping to make earth as it is in heaven… they are driving a wedge between a generation of young people who are tired of the fruitiness and just want to see the fruit of the Spirit.

The question to ask is, how will we know we are fruitful? When the Spirit is bearing fruit, Paul reminds us what that looks like:

Gal 5:22-23

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

When we are fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ… when we are allowing the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and be revealed in us, that is what our lives will look like. That’s not fruity, that’s fruitful.

As we wrap this up, I just want to say something about the Holy Spirit. Some are asking, If we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of live, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets… if we beliefe this,

Does that mean we believe in speaking in tongues?

Does this mean we believe in miracles?

Does this mean that we believe in visions and prophecy?

Does this mean that we believe in the Holy Ghost power and all that stuff?

Well, I guess it kinda does, but you know what? That’s been a part of Methodism since John Wesley allowed the Holy Spirit to work in him at the birth of this movement.

The Pentecostal Church doesn’t have a lock on the Holy Spirit?

Did you know that the Pentecostal Movement started in the Methodist Episcopal Church?

Did you know that the Assembly of God churches sprang from the roots of Methodism?

They are our theological cousins. We are family.

Rather than look at them and say, “They must be drunk”

Maybe we need to look in awe and amazement, asking “How can this be? Lord fill us with your Holy Spirit, Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.

Amen?… Amen