Scared of The Holy Spirit

Welcome

Opening prayer

John 16:13

13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

Offering

Doxology

Worship Song

Worship Song

Junior church

Joys and concerns

Worship Song

Apostles Creed

‌I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

creator of heaven and earth;

‌I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried;*

He descended to the dead

on the third day he rose again

he ascended into heaven,

is seated at the right hand the Father

and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

‌I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic* church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting.

Amen

Let us Pray

Lord we ask that you be with us this morning as we study about the Holy Spirit and celebrate Pentecost.

Amen

Scared of The Holy Spirit

I believe we neglect the Holy Spirit when we are talking about the trinity. We even come to the point that we are scared of the Holy Spirit. Why is it the third part of the Holy Trinity and we as pastors assume you understand the Hoy Spirit. We need to start by explaining the holy spirit.

It is impossible to understand the Bible, Christian living, the structure of the church or our own relationship with God without understanding the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an “it.” The Holy Spirit is a person. The Bible says that He is not something. He is Someone. He is God.

To understand this better, let’s talk about the Trinity. There are three persons in the Trinity—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Christians do not worship multiple gods. God the Son, or Jesus Christ, was God in human form. The Holy Spirit lives inside us when we accept Christ and helps us grow closer to God.

The moment we receive Christ as Savior, the Holy Spirit comes to live in our hearts. The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost) is all-powerful and present everywhere. The Holy Spirit teaches us and takes us deeper into God’s truth as we go along in our Christian life.

There is not a person anywhere who can be a Christian without the Holy Spirit. There is not a person who can follow Christ without the help of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit sees everything that goes on. He knows what goes on in our hearts. He knows what goes on in our minds. Nothing is hidden from Him.

The Holy Spirit is also called holy. The Bible says, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). One of the Holy Spirit’s ministries is to help make us holy—to become more like Christ. So you see when we talk about the Holy Spirit we are talking about God who is the Holy trinity. So you see we have nothing to be afraid of. We know God only wants good for us. on this Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the day that The Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and other followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, fulfilling Jesus promise and marking the birthday of the church. This happened as they were all gathered celebrating the feast of weeks. This is the first part of a series I am putting together on the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is celebrated the seventh Sunday after Easter.

When people say they sometimes are afraid of the Holy Spirit they are referring to the things that happened when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles. Like they began to speak in tongues, something that people never experienced before and we don’t really explain in our normal text. We will be talking about it in the weeks to come. A large crowed gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot (Pentecost) which occurred 50 days after Passover. Peter gave a sermon explaining that the event was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel. As Peter gave his sermon about 3000 people were baptized after hearing the sermon and witnessing the power of the Holy Spirit. So you see with all the things that happened on Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit we can see how people tend to be scared by his arrival. Let me read to you from the book of Acts 2:1-13 it is titled the coming of the Holy Spirit. This will help you to understand the story as well as understand why some people get scared by the Holy Spirit.

 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.

5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

So you see there are many reasons for us to become confused and be scared. We will break these down over the next few weeks and hopefully have a better understanding of the Holy Spirit. So I pray we begin to understand the Holy Spirit so that we will do not have to be afraid.

Amen

Communion

Doxology

Final Worship Song

Walk to the back

Benediction