Why The Holy Spirit Matters

Introduction

Good morning everyone. This sermon will be a much more topical sermon so we will be bouncing around in Scripture a bit. Some of you may have noticed the handouts in the back with the bulletins. They contain the Scripture that I reference, some old creeds of the church, and some books I found helpful on the sermon subject. I know last week Pastor James thought it would be appropriate to teach on the Holy Spirit. I figured I would continue the teaching and get into some teachings that have been neglected by the church over these decades. I would say the neglect of these doctrines has reflected in the culture and even culture within the church itself. One of the biggest motivators for this type of sermon was a video I saw talking about the top 5 heresies, or teachings that deny the core beliefs of Christianity, that are believed by the American Church today. The number one heresy was saying that Jesus is not the only way, and that there are many ways to God. Going through the gospel of John, we know John 14:6 states “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” What was almost equally concerning was the other four heresies were all related to the trinity. This doctrine that is exclusive to the Christian faith. Why is this happening? In part it is the lack of teaching of this doctrine. While we cannot comprehend it to the fullest degree, since it explains the very essence of God’s being, we should be able to communicate well enough what God has revealed to us through Scripture. We will be going over one member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, in detail to help understand the depths of the trinity. A quick outline of the trinity doctrine would be that God is one essence expressed in three persons. In simple terms, 3 who’s but 1 what. In the handout I put some of the old church creeds for you to look at. These are not Scripture, but are written by men who have thought about this longer and with more fervor than I even have the capacity to give.

But before we get into the Scripture we are going to hop into the realm of philosophy for just a second. I want to pose a question. Why does the God of the bible need to be triune? Why can’t He just be one person? That is because of God’s character. 1 John 4:8 “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” How can God be love if the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit were the only person? There is a line explaining this in the Nicene Creed. It states:

The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten from anyone. The Son was neither made nor created; he was begotten from the Father alone. The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created nor begotten; he proceeds from the Father and the Son.

So this is can be confusing wording but let me see if I can break this down. The Son was begotten John 1:14 , doesn’t mean like how people were begotten or to come after, but He was eternally begotten. Coming from the same essence and always existing. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, not as in He comes after them but from their relationship He is sent. John 15:26 ““But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” The Spirit is sent from the Father and the Son in this passage to us. Why does this matter? If Jesus was created, and not eternal, then God the Father would not have been a Father until creation was started. This means that God is not immutable or unchanging. For God the Father to always be the Father, God the Son must be eternally begotten, as in of the same essence but always existing. Then the Spirit eternally flows out of the love of the Father and Son. All coeternally coexisting. This means that God doesn’t need us to not be lonely or to be loving. God created us because He is a creator and overflowing with love from His community of persons.

The trinity is important, and could be a whole sermon series by itself, but to narrow our focus we will be focusing on 3 attributes of God expressed by the Spirit. This is to show that He has the same characteristics as God. These attributes are His personal nature, His powerful nature, and His purifying nature. His personal nature, His powerful nature, and His purifying nature.

His Personal Nature

John 14:16 “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,” In the Greek text the word another would state “of the same kind.” So the Spirit is stated to be of the same kind of Helper that Jesus was while He left earth. What does this mean? He teaches you, convicts you, and comforts you. John 14:26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” The Holy Spirit is given male pronouns. He is not an it or that, but a He and Him. Teaching is a very personal thing. Sometimes life teaches you lessons, but a mere force like gravity or electricity do not teach you things outside of their own function from observation.

The Spirit can be grieved Ephesians 4:30. He can be lied to as we see in Acts 5:1–4 “But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.”” You see Peter also claims that the Holy Spirit is God. In verse 3 you see that Peter is speaking about the Holy Spirit, but the last words of verse 4 state that Ananias lied “to God.”The apostles knew this fact of the Spirit. Jesus did too, that is why He said that the Spirit could be blasphemed to the Pharisees in Matthew 12:31.

These things being grieved, being lied to, blasphemed, are all things that can be done, not to an impersonal force, but a personal God that feels for, cares for, and works with and in us who believe. We can trust that the Spirit will be with us, because of the finished work of Christ, so that we may know all the persons of God.

His Powerful Nature

The Spirit has all the power of God. As we continue on in Acts 5 we see that for lying to the Spirit, Ananias is killed on the spot for it. We see the power over life and death that the Spirit has.

The Spirit was part of creation in Genesis 1:2 “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” In the book Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith Michael Reeves makes mention of the role of the Spirit in creation “What is the Spirit’s role? … while the Son establishes and holds all things (Heb 1:3) the Spirit perfects or completes the work of creation… In other words, the Spirit garnishes and beautifies the heavens and the earth.” There is this wonderful imagery that you see in creation. And God said let there be light. The Father is initiating the idea, and the Word, the Son, is spoken, and the Spirit is the breath. All are part of the creation of the world.

The Spirit also conceived Jesus in Mary’s womb. This would be another example of the Spirit being used to create.

We see the Spirit giving power and empowering God’s people in the New and the Old Testaments. We see in the life of Samson that the Spirit comes upon him in power before he does many of the great feats of strength he is known for such as ripping a lion apart by the jaw and killing 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. In our modern era, we see these passages dealing with mass casualties like this and we have a hard time with it. But these feats were to show the enemies of God, the Philistines and their pagan worship, the power that is of God and His righteous judgement. It also shows that even in the Old Testament, God provided the means to protect His people.

Moving to the New Testament we see the Spiritual gifts given to the apostles and to the early church to help spread the Gospel which we will go more in depth on when we talk about the Spirit’s purifying nature. The Spirit also gives us the power and knowledge to speak boldly in the face of Kings Luke 12:11–12 “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”” This verse does not excuse us from reading our bibles nor should it discourage us from studying Christian apologetics, which is the study of defending our faith. This verse states that you shouldn’t be overly concerned with your competence. God doesn’t need you to be the wisest, smartest, or greatest person to show kings and rulers who He is. When we study these things, we should do it to help us seek to worship the Lord more effectively.

The Spirit has power and gives us power so that the work of Christ on the cross would work itself out in us, and allows us to live a life worthy of our calling to the Lord.

His Purifying Nature

John 14:15–17 ““If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” Jesus goes away so that the Spirit might be within us. This is a restoration of the relationship we are supposed to have with God. Like in Eden, God now dwells with us through the Holy Spirit. Did you notice the wording I used when I talked about Samson? The Spirit came upon him. He did not dwell in him. Even David after his sin with Bathsheba writes in Psalm 51:11 “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.” There was a fear that the Spirit could be removed from David. In 1 Sam 16:14 we see that it was removed from King Saul. We, as believers of the new covenant, don’t need to have this worry. God sealed us with His Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13) so that if we are born again, the Spirit will not depart from us. How do we know this is true? We follow and keep God’s commands. We will go more in depth on this in a minute.

Now as I mentioned earlier we would talk about the gifts of the Spirit. There are three main passages that talk about these gifts Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, and 1 Corinthians 12:28. I want to focus on the second list. 1 Corinthians 12:4–11 “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” Something I noticed when reflecting on this passage is that these gifts in some way are the undoing of the curse of sin in the world. For example healing is the Spirit’s work of undoing the pain, turmoil, and death that we aren’t supposed to experience outside of sin’s corruption. The various kinds of tongues is the undoing of our arrogant acts at the tower of Babel where God mixed up our languages as punishment for us thinking we could make our own way to Him. The Spirit is expressing the power of God over sin and temptation.

The Spirit also gives us wisdom and right thinking. He restores our minds to think of God rightly and to act rightly. How do we know that the Spirit is in us? Not by the works of Spiritual gifts, but by the fruit of the Spirit. This is part of the reason that Paul is writing the first letter to the Corinthians. He is criticizing them for trying to rank each other by their gifts. But all are needed in the body of Christ, the universal church. So how do we know? Well how do you know if a tree is good? By it’s fruit. The fruits of the Spirit are listed in Galatians 5:22–23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” These things are of God and show that we are of God. You will see these fruits in nonbelievers, but in a fallen sort of way. They are tarnished image bearers of God. They seek to be good like God, but without His involvement. The world and the ruler of this world has created twisted, corrupted versions of these fruits. The world’s kindness is self-fulfilling, the world’s joy is hollow, and the world’s peace is a lie. These fruits, the good fruits, are only from the one who is good, God Himself. They grow through us in the finished work of Christ and the Spirit’s continuing work in our salvation and sanctification.

Conclusion

This sermon was to show you the importance of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. We have gone over how the Spirit is personally available to all who believe, gives us power when we need it, and purifies us so that we may be blameless in God’s sight.

There is a quote by Nancy Leigh Demoss that states, “Sound theology should always lead to doxology and transformation.” In other words, what we know about God should lead to worship and becoming more like Jesus. As we go out this week may we remember the power of the Spirit, given by Christ’s sacrifice, sent by the Father, so that we may remember that we aren’t to do this alone, but by His power.

Let us pray,

Oh, God in heaven, we thank You for Your glorious name. We thank You for how You have revealed Yourself to us. Help us continue to seek out answers to guide our understanding. May Your triune nature be given the proper reverence, and diligence in our worship. May the Spirit give us power to go do Your work, in all that we do. In Jesus name, amen.