The Anointing (2)

KEY PASSAGE: 1 JOHN 2:20-27 (NASB)

Welcome

We welcome you to our Sunday morning worship service, including our first-time visitors. First-time visitors, please stand so we can see you and recognize you, and let us welcome our online viewers. We are glad to have you with us today.

Holy Communion Exhortation One

Today is the first Sunday, and we will be taking Communion. As we prepare to partake in Communion, I want you to examine yourself. In his wisdom, Paul encourages believers to do so before approaching the Lord’s Table. The purpose of Communion is not to distance us from the Lord’s Table but to draw us closer. As we partake in Communion this morning, let us reflect on the past, as the broken bread symbolizes Christ’s body, and look forward to the future, as the return of Jesus is the blessed hope of the church and the individual Christian.

Let us pray. Gracious Father, I pray that You refresh our souls with the joy of Your salvation. Bless the little piece of bread as a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice and the unity of this body. Bless the cup as a sharing in the death of Christ, as we die to ourselves to live for You. We are deeply grateful for Your love and forgiveness. In Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen.

Tithe and Offering

As we prepare to give our tithe and offering to God today, I want to draw your attention to the spiritual significance of 'Giving with Grace.' Grace is a powerful and inspiring force, and giving to God sincerely and cheerfully reflects that grace. It also reveals some of the qualities that make grace so attractive. The most fundamental aspect of giving is the condition of your heart before God and your attitude towards generosity. When we give generously to God, we reflect His grace and image. The outcome of such giving is that it ultimately brings glory to God, bears much fruit, and blesses others. Let us welcome our ushers as they pass around the offering plates, and please follow the instructions on the screen on how to give.

PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

LORD, we want to honor you with all we are, all we have got, and all we have been given. You have been gracious and faithful to us; we want our lives to overflow in grateful worship. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O LORD, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen.

Announcement

Please look up on the screen as we make our announcement. The next New Member Class is Sunday, April 14th, at 1:00 p.m. The Leaders’ Meeting is Saturday, April 20th, at 12:00 p.m. MEN’S BREAKFAST is Saturday, April 27th, at 10:00 a.m. Our church’s weekly Bible Study is at 7:00 p.m. every Wednesday. Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio recently approved our church as a food pantry. Before we start the Food Pantry program here at our church, we will be offering training to folks interested in volunteering with the Food Pantry. Please contact Minister Terry Robinson if you are interested in volunteering.

Declaration of Faith in God

Let us stand and say the Declaration of Faith in God together.

SERMON INTRODUCTION

We have been studying the names of the Holy Spirit because those names indicate His function and His work in the l;ife of a believer. Remember now that this third member or person of the Trinity is the one given to work on earth on behalf of the godhead in heaven. God the Father was the point person in the Old Testament. Jesus the Son was the point person on earth during the gospels. God, the Holy Spirit, is the point person during this time, which we call the Church Age.

The Holy Spirit is the member of the Trinity who has been assigned to act on their behalf in history. The Father functions from the third heaven. The Son sits on His right hand to rule spiritually in heaven to earth, and He does that through the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Today, I want to look at the name given to Him, this identification, and this symbol in First (1st) John chapter 2:20. He is called the Anointing, the name of our church. The name of our church, which has the word “Anointed,” can be seen on our church letterhead, on the front of our building unit, on our church website, logo, flier, and on the chairs you are sitting on today.

This word speaks to a specific work of the Holy Spirit that you don't want to leave home without. Let me give you some Bible references about the “Anointing.” In Acts chapter 10:38, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit anointed Jesus. “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him.”

Jesus said in Luke chapter 4, verses 18 and 19, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me.” So, the Anointing and the Anointed One refer to the work of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life, including Jesus Christ's.

SERMON EXPOSITION

The first thing we want to establish for our sermon for today is this: Every Christian has the Anointing. If you are saved and accepted by Jesus Christ, you have whatever this Anointing is.

We will explain this in a moment: But you have the Anointing, you possess it, you own it, and it is there. This Anointing speaks of the indwelling presence and work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Let me say that again. The Anointing is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit designed to do His work in the life of a believer.

So, right now, I am preaching and teaching you about God’s Word, but you also have an internal teaching ministry inside of you called the Holy Spirit, who illuminates your mind so you can understand and faithfully apply God’s truth and detect deception and false doctrine. To put this another way, you have a built-in lie detector that perseveres in the truth. Alright!

Let me back what I just said to you with a Scripture. First (1st) Corinthians chapter 6 verse 19 says, “You have the Holy Spirit who indwells you.” Jesus said, “I am going to give you the Holy Spirit. I will gift the Holy Spirit to you as a permanent resident in you, and He will anoint you.”

And if you are reading out of the King James version, the Anointing is referred to as the “unction” in First (1st) John chapter 2:20.

So, every Christian has the Anointing, which is why he says in verse 20, “You have an Anointing, and you all know.” So you can't be a Christian and not be anointed. If you are a Christian, you have the Anointing. The key is knowing what it is and how to use it so you can benefit from it. Because he says, “You all possess it, and you all have the Anointing.” The job of the Anointing coming from the Holy Anointed One, the Holy Spirit, is to illuminate, bring to light, and elucidate in your life God’s message. The job of the Holy Spirit is to take from up there (that is, heaven) and show it to you here on earth. The job of the Anointing is to give you the data from heaven to your operation and my operation in history.

If you don't know you have the Anointing and don't know how to use it, you won't benefit from it, even though you possess it. It is unfortunate today because many Christians, and maybe even most Christians, don't know that they have the Anointing, don't know how to use it, and therefore don't benefit from it. The job of this Anointing is to extract information from heaven so that you can have it available to you on earth and use it.

Now, the way the Anointing works, as we said in one of our sermons on the Names of the Holy Spirit, is that when you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit enters your human spirit. The Holy Spirit enters the human spirit. Your spirit was given to you to provide you with the capacity to communicate with God. When you accept Christ, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sent, infiltrates your human spirit. That is the Anointing, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in your human spirit. Your human spirit, which the Holy Spirit has anointed, is inside your soul.

Your soul is your self-identity. It is your personhood. The reason you know you exist today is because you have a soul. You lose the soul, and the body doesn't function because the body is dependent upon the soul to express life. The Holy Spirit enters the human spirit, making the human spirit alive to God. The human spirit exists in the soul so that the soul can get data from the human spirit anointed by the Holy Spirit, which feeds the human spirit information to distribute to the soul.

When the soul receives information from the human spirit that the Holy Spirit has illuminated, it feeds that data to the human body. When the body gets data from the soul, which is received from the human spirit that the Holy Spirit has anointed, it functions differently because it has new data from heaven.

The reason why we have problems with our bodies is because we have an infection in our soul. We have an infection in our souls because we have a human spirit that has been contaminated by a three-letter word called “sin.”

Here is some good news for you after the bad news. When the Anointing enters the human spirit, because the Anointing is so perfect, the human spirit is now perfect because it has been anointed. So, you have a perfect resident in your human spirit who now wants to give information to your infected soul. And when the Holy Spirit, which now invades your human spirit, sends out data received and adopted in your soul, your soul begins to heal.

The Anointing authorizes you to receive information from heaven for living your life here on earth. In First Corinthians chapter 2, verse 9 says: “But as it is written, things which eyes have not seen, and ear have not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him. For to us God revealed them through His Spirit.”

He is not talking about heaven. He is talking about the earth because God has already revealed it. So, listen to this. When the Anointing is turned on and turned up in a person’s life, you get to see things eyes cannot see.

That is what verse 9 says. When the Anointing is turned on and up, you hear things your ears have not heard and think about things you would not normally think about. In other words, the Anointing is taking you beyond the physical. It shows you what your eyes can't see. The Anointing lets you hear what your ears don't pick up. It enables you to perceive what you don't normally think. The Anointing takes you out of your physical into a spiritual reality so that the physical is now perceiving, experiencing, seeing, and hearing things outside its normal physical realm and reality. So, if all you see is what you see, you do not see all there is to be seen.

Illustration on the Anointing

So, if you are limited to your five senses, then you will not get a divine message from heaven because even though you are a Christian, even though you are a believer, the dimmer switch is off, or it is so low. And so, you can't see the light shining. There must be the ability to see beyond the physical realm: the eye, the ear, and your human mind. Look at what he goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 2:10. He says, “We receive them from the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” Remember, the Anointing is the Spirit. The Spirit has a search engine called Google—the Spirit Googles stuff about God. The Spirit knows all the deep things of God. In the next verse, he says, “No one knows the thoughts of a man, except the spirit of a man which is in him. No one knows the thoughts of God, except the Spirit, the Anointing, the Spirit of God.”

The Spirit of God has a search engine. It says He searches God’s deep things. Like a deep-sea diver, the Spirit can go deep into God’s thinking, and His job is to transfer God’s thoughts to your life, just like when you Google something on the Google search engine. The job of the Spirit is to reach into the mind of God and transfer to the thoughts, sights, and ears of the believer. His job is to take the truth and make it your experience, to bring it, to make it your reality, not just for information, but for transformation.

Now, back to 1 John chapter 2. He tells them, “Here is what I want you to do. If you want the Anointing turned on and up, here is what I want you to do.” He says in verse 24, “As for you, let that abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning.” Verse 27 says, “As for you, the Anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you.” But as His Anointing teaches you all things that are true and not a lie, you abide in Him just as it has taught you.

Do you see the word “abide?” The word abide appears five times in verses 24 through 27. Abide means you have to hang out in the Anointing. You can't visit the Anointing on Sunday morning and don’t hang out with the Anointing during the rest of the week. You must hang out with the Anointing. Abide means to hang out. You must hang out in the Anointing.

That is why you must have a divinely oriented perspective. When you ask the questions, “What does God say, and what does God think? The Holy Spirit, reveal it to me,” you have turned on the receiver for the Holy Spirit to bring down the programming and illuminate your mind and thoughts.

Please notice what he says. He says, “You have the anointing, and you do not need anyone to teach you.” That is very interesting because, number one, he is teaching them right now. He is writing to them and teaching them about the Anointing. It is interesting because the Bible says God gives teachers to the church in Ephesians 4:11. It is interesting because the Bible tells you to come and study the Word of God in collective worship, which includes teaching and preaching. It is interesting because Paul tells Timothy to preach the Word in and out of season.

So, why would he say, “If you have the Anointing, you don't need anyone to teach you, for the Anointing teaches you?” Well, remember who he is dealing with. And who is he talking to? He is dealing with the antichrists who are lying to them and teaching them false doctrine.

So, let me tell you what he is saying when he says, “You don't need anyone to teach you.” He says, “You no longer need to be led by secular thinking, materialistic information, and worldly instructors. You no longer need to use the world for your data. You don't need to go to the world system for your spiritual data. You don't need them to teach you how to live, work, have a family, or be single. You don't need them. You don't need the world system to teach you. Start with me because then the Anointing will teach you.”

Faith Appeal

That is why the psalmist prayed in Psalm 119:18, “Open my eyes that I might see.” To see what? The Wonderful Things. Many of us are being attacked physically, and we don't know what to do because we don't see anything spiritually. All we see is what we see. And if all you see is what you see, you will never see all God is doing because you don't have the eyes to do it.

But here is how the Holy Spirit works. When I preach to you on Sunday, I give you national news. I am giving you cable network news because what I give you in my sermon is general and applies to everybody. But when you have the Anointing, the Holy Spirit gives you the local news. The Holy Spirit gives you news for your life, for your situation, for your problem, for your pain, for your needs.

So, you need local programming for the general problems you face and deal with daily. The preacher on Sunday gives you cable news, but you have the Anointing, and I can't answer all of your specific questions, but you have Somebody inside who will give you revelation and thoughts you didn't think. You already have the Anointing. Give the Anointing a chance. Put the Anointing first in your life and all that you do. Make the Anointing a priority. Take the written Word of God, put it in the face of the Holy Spirit, do it on the front end, and let's see what programming God brings into your life.

Call to Action (Conclusion)

Let me close with the Rocky Mountains, one of the highest national parks in America. In the midst of the Rocky Mountains’ beauty, there is a problem with receiving internet or satellite signals because of the surroundings. In other words, the Rocky Mountains' surroundings interfere with our ability to pick up signals. God the Father never wants our surroundings on earth to interfere with our receiving communications and information from heaven. That is why He has given every believer what the Bible calls the Anointing.

The Anointing is the work of the Holy Spirit, where He delivers heavenly information to our earthly environment. It is this connection, as we apply with the Spirit, that God can speak specifically into our earthly circumstances, situations, challenges, difficulties, and need for clarity and guidance to show us which way God wants us to move and how he wants us to take the next step in life. Don't leave home without the Anointing. Yes, it is true that we are surrounded by the rocks of earth, but don't lose sight of heaven because you leave the Holy Spirit behind. The Holy Spirit, the Anointing, is the key and the bridge through which heaven communicates God’s messages to you here on earth, no matter where you are.

Altar Call

If you are here today or maybe watching by live stream, you can only get the Anointing by accepting Jesus into your life as your Savior. When you confess that Jesus is the Son of God and that you are a sinner in need of a Savior, you will receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But you must confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved. And with that salvation comes justification, peace, grace, hope, and love. I will encourage you to make that decision right now. If you are not saved, don’t leave here today.

Father God, let it be so. Those who need to know You to be unbound and free. And everyone who needs to fully commit their life to Jesus, letting the old go and taking up the new in Christ Jesus.

Let’s pray.

Benediction

May the God of hope fill every heart here today with joy and peace as you trust in Him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus name, Amen! God bless you, and may the peace of God be with you. We look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday for Bible Study.