Come, Holy Spirit

Connection/Tension

Open with prayer guide...

New series Vineyard 101: Finding Identity in our Distinctives.

Have you ever been offended? Like, really offended. Not, I’m offended that this person voted a certain way, but an offense that is deeply painful. Have you ever been so offended, and just hurt, that it became hard for you to be in the same room with someone. Maybe you overheard someone you thought was a friend bad-mouthing you in front of others. Maybe you had a parent that was unfaithful and you took up the wronged parents offense. Maybe your offense comes from a moment of deep betrayal, abandonment, being lied about, or falsely accused. We’ve probably all been offended at this level.

We’re invited to a young woman’s wedding next week. I love this young woman deeply, I want to support her in her new life. But there are people in her family that have deeply wounded me. I still love them. I’ve even forgiven them - I think. But I don’t know that I have the emotional energy to sit in a room with them and pretend that everything is all right. This is the kind of offense I’m talking about.

Do you ever think that we might offend the Holy Spirit? I’ve been asked many times by other believers, and I’ve pondered the question a lot myself, “why doesn’t God show up and do the things that he did in the book of Acts?” These questions come from sincere, Jesus-loving people who long for a deeper encounter with God. And while I don’t think there is a single, simple answer to the question, I have to wonder if one reason the Spirit doesn’t come like he did in Acts is because of offense. Maybe we’ve offended him. I don’t mean offended him because we are notorious sinners - the scriptures give lots of evidence of God’s Spirit filling broken, sinful people. I wonder if we haven’t offended him through our own sense of self-reliance. Our independence. A keep-at-arms-length attitude. An attitude that says we can get on just find without him, thank you very much.

I wonder if we have offended the Spirit by our own offense of the Spirit’s personhood. What I mean is, have we become offended by what the Spirit might do? Have we become so sophisticated that we are offended by the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, and as a result we are offending him, keeping him from showing up in the ways that he would like to, in ways that bring the genuine transformation we long to see take place? Is our fear of looking foolish offending the Spirit?

The Vineyard distinctive I want to look at this morning is really an ancient prayer of the church. Come, Holy Spirit. We can find evidence of the church praying and singing this simple prayer as early as the 200s AD. Come, Holy Spirit has been called the central prayer liturgy of the Vineyard. For the Vineyard, Come, Holy Spirit means that We are a people of the presence of God.

Text

This morning I can only touch a little on what it means when we pray Come, Holy Spirit. There’s not enough time to do a full teaching on the Holy Spirit - that would take hours. So I’m going to give you a snapshot of the Holy Spirit’s ministry as explained by Jesus. This will be intentionally brief because I want to save time at the end to show you something.

A couple of broad statements about this prayer before we look at our texts. First, it should be said that when we pray Come, Holy Spirit, we are not saying that the Holy Spirit is not already among us. We are saying “We know you are here, and we’d like you to come and do more.” We are welcoming the Spirit to come change our life and the lives of those around us.

And, praying Come, Holy Spirit is an acknowledgement of the Spirit’s Godhood. We hold to the scriptural doctrine of the Trinity, that God is One and yet exists eternally as three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So praying Come, Holy Spirit is an invitation to God himself.

The backdrop for these verses we’re about to look at is that Jesus is explaining to his disciples that he is about to leave them, and that this is actually a good thing because when he goes, the Father will send the Holy Spirit. Up until this time in his ministry, the Holy Spirit has been with the disciples, but with his leaving the Holy Spirit will now be in them in a new and transforming way. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the paraclete. It means “one who comes alongside”. This is translated Advocate in the Bible I use, but can also be translated Helper or Comforter. As we read through these verses you will see that the Spirit will perform all these rolls for the disciples.

John 14:15–18 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”

First, we see that The Spirit is God’s presence with you. “Another” means “of the same kind”. Meaning, when Jesus leaves, the Holy Spirit will be as Jesus to them. They are not losing Jesus presence, they are gaining an even greater experience of his presence because now he will be with them forever.

We often wonder where God is. Jesus assures his followers that God’s presence is there inside them, even when momentary trauma may hide his face. We have the Spirit in us through faith in Jesus, symbolized in our baptism.

John 14:25–26 ““I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”

Next, The Spirit is God’s guidance for you. We can trust the Holy Spirit to guide us, to teach us, to remind us of what Jesus has said, giving us comfort that we are his children. When we feel like we are in a dark place, the Spirit will be a light that guides us out.

John 15:26–27 ““When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”

Then, The Spirit is God’s witness to you. Many struggle with whether or not they are truly children of God. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that the Spirit “testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, causing us to cry out to God, ‘Abba’, ‘Father’.” In other words, if our desire is to know God as our Father, this is the witness of the Spirit that we are his children. The Spirit testifies of this to us internally, then calls us to testify to this reality to others externally.

John 16:7–11 “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”

Finally, The Spirit is God’s truth through you. Have you ever noticed that some people just don’t like Christians? Sometimes we give them good reason, right? But some don’t like us simply because of what we represent. The testimony you carry as a follower of Jesus, a testimony that the Spirit convicts others with, is that they are in the wrong. They are in the wrong about the nature and consequence of sin. They are in the wrong about who Jesus is as evidenced by his resurrection. And they are in the wrong concerning the judgment God is bringing against the world. Yet, this truth that you bear in the Spirit is also God’s power at work in you to bring loving conviction the world so that they might repent and be saved.

Gospel/Response

Come, Holy Spirit means we want the Spirit to be at work doing all of these things in us and through us. It is our appeal for God’s presence in every way in our life. We have chosen not to seek the power of God in terms of specific signs or manifestations. Rather we seek the presence of God, because with his presence comes his power.

If you don’t know this God, if you long for this presence, we invite you to follow Jesus. This is the starting point to a transformed life, what Jesus called being “born again”. Water baptism is how a commitment to Jesus was expressed in the Bible. If you’d like to take that step or want to discuss it you can use the link on the screen to connect with me. (next steps slide)

I tried to speak quickly and changed our format a little because I wanted to have time to show you a video clip from John Wimber and give us all space to respond to the Spirit this morning. This is his testimony of when Come, Holy Spirit became the central prayer of the Vineyard.

(Play Wimber video)

Are you offending the Spirit by your independence and self-reliance? Are you offended by the Spirit because you feel too proud or sophisticated to yield to his presence?

Come, Holy Spirit!