Who is the Holy Spirit and What Are We Supposed to Do With Him

Introduction

Let me shake some people up in a very good way this morning

“Christianity is not primarily about lifestyle change; it is about knowing God.

To know and grow to enjoy him is what we are saved for...

Getting to know God better does actually make for far more profound and practical change as well.

Michael Reeves says : Knowing the love of God is the very thing that makes us loving. Sensing the desirability of God alters our preferences and inclinations, the things that drive our behavior: We begin to want God more than anything else.”

It is the scandal of the gospel that creates what Thomas Chalmers called “"The Expulsive Power of a New Affection"

You were made to love

The question is what do you love as ultimate?

We inherently have "affections" or desires that drive their actions. 

The human heart will not be left empty

before Christ we are not simply coasting

We are still loving and desiring something to make us free and whole and loved

We are people of misplaced loves

And it is inescapably damaging

What does that have to do with answering the question for today: Who is the Holy Spirit and What Do We Do With Him?

It has everything to do with it BECAUSE…the holy spirit is the central agent in that war in your heart as a believer in the gospel

A Stronger Love Displaces a Weaker One: The Holy Spirit wages the war for us so Christ is our greatest love…which leads to the life change that sets us free

The new affection is not something people can achieve by their own effort but comes through the power of the Spirit inside of us when we are saved

Maybe you though the answer would be about healings and the miraculous

Maybe you think the spirit simply helps me have the fruit of the spirit so I am behaving more chirstian

But to know the spirit is to know the war of your heart and what we really need….not speaking in tongues but a new heart and help in the war we face with sin and a world that isn’t how it’s supposed to be

Step one is to not take the Holy Spirit in isolation but see Him for Who He IS in the context of the trinity

We have to Delight in the Trinity

The word Trinity is a confusing churchy word

But it is the God we worship and should delight in

We have a heart pursuing heart winning God that has eternally existed in three distinct persons

There is a new city chatecism for kids the boys listen too

One of the questions they sing is the answer to this: There are 3 persons in one God

The Holy Spirit plays his part of that eternal relationship

Why it matters:

If you are talking to your lost friend and you ask do they believe in God most likely people will say yes

But we assume in doing that that the idea of God us just universally understood as THIS God

As if we will all be thinking of this trinity God we are saved by

Michael Reeves says: Trying to get along with some unspecified God we will quickly find ourselves with another God”

And to miss who our God is is to miss why we should delight in Him above all other false gods out there

A vague “god” misses the beauty of who he is

And as we saw in our intro knowing God is the point of Christianity

Our God unlike any other has revealed himself first as Father

That is a radical statement

He is not first creator or ruler

salvation is not letting me off the hook as a law abiding citzen

That isn’t love

But as Father first …not ruler

But Father

Before He ever created a thing, before he ever ruled the world, before anything else this God was a Father loving His Son

All of His ways toward you right now in your imperfection and struggle and wars of the heart are always right now Fatherly

That means our God is an eternally outgoing life giving God

That is huge for us to get in understanding the Holy Spirit

Who He has been before you were ever created was God seeking to come to you to give you life when you were dead in sin

Ephesians 2 lays out the war God is outgoing in coming to us as the comabatant in that war for us if we understand who our God is

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 2

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.

there is the old dead spirit we walked in

But God….

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 2

8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—9 not from works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

Look at verse 10: The holy Spirit is the active chisel on your stone heart making you a masterpiece

And we see it is who he has always been: created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

Before God created a thing he was an outgoing loving God in relationship with one another

Before he created a thing he had a plan to save me through the outpouring of who He already is

The Father would be the initiator of the plan because he loves us

The Son in obedience would suffer and die for us because he loves us The Spirit would come and make us alive and war for our hearts THROUGH testifying to Christ in all He does because he loves us

2. Why it makes sense

God could not be love if there was nobody to love

The way that the Father shows His love is precisely though giving the Spirit

Romans 5:5 “This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

That is the dynamic of Jesus’ life

The Spirit has eternally existed to make much of Christ and in doing that is doing the most loving thing God could do

When Jesus calls the Father Abba it is said with joy

The Spirit so makes the Father known to the Son that the Son rejoices

Luke 10:21 “At that time he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth….

The Spirit has eternally existed to make much of the Father and the Son

In the bible the joy of the Gospel the Spirit brings is said to be better then even wine

Ephesians 5:18 “And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit:”

Why ? because the Joy of the Gospel and knowing God is a better feeling then even your best high

The spirit has eternally existed in the Trinity to point to Jesus so that we feel the weight of the “ Expulsive Power of a New Affection"

His Role Today

His role is to make us feel what we know

Jesus knew we needed that more then anything

John 16:7 “Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth. It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send him to you.”

It is better for me to go: we didn’t need more teaching we needed a new heart

Jesus knew that

Our hearts are the issue

It is popular advice to tell people to follow your heart”

What a trainwreck that is making

Our hearts are the issue

Another sermon on the mount from Jesus wasn’t what we needed

He had revealed who he was

What we needed was what no dead person can do

We needed our hearts to beat again (But how they were supposed to always be)

If our hearts do not desire Jesus they never will

That is how we are saved

That is how we fight sin

The holy spirits role is that he makes jesus the expulsive power of a greater treasure then what we could gain from sin

The Message of Romans b. The Mind of the Spirit (5–8)

His role is to excite our hearts to follow the promptings and surrender to the control of the Spirit rather than the flesh

John 14:26 “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.”

It is the Holy Spirits work in you to remind you of the beauty of Christ and remind you of what he has said SO THAT when you place the Gospel on the scales with your sin you will choose the greater weight

That is the Holy Spirits role

But wait theres more…..

Romans 8:26 “In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings.”

His role is to help us ….

John Murray said

The Message of Romans b. The Sufferings and Glory of God’s Children (23–27)

‘the children of God have two divine intercessors’, . ‘Christ is their intercessor in the court of heaven …,’ while ‘the Holy Spirit is their intercessor in the theatre of their own hearts

Follow your Heart?

We don’t even know what we want or what will make us happy

We need help and don’t even know what to ask for

The language in the Greek makes this make sense

The language of it is not that the groans aren’t understandable

It is that they are inexpressible by us

We don’t even know the help we need and we are even more helpless to find that help in anything we could do for ourselves

The Message of Romans b. The Sufferings and Glory of God’s Children (23–27)

the Holy Spirit identifies with our groans, with the pain of the world and life, and shares in the longing for the final freedom of both. We and he groan together for everything sad to come untrue

His Role is to so captivate our hearts with Christ and remind us of what is coming that we know the expulsive power of a new affection

His role is to make us feel in our hearts what we know.

What we are supposed to do with who he is

Ephesians 6:17–18 “Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit—which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.”

He is the loving self giving warrior for your heart and affections to always be centered on Christ

What we are supposed to do with the spirit today is rely on Him in order to live the everyday Christian life

Since our problem is with our hearts the Spirit gives us new birth into a new life precisely by giving us a new heart

Its is what he promised to do Ezekiel 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

And exactly what He has done and is doing

John 3:3–8 “Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.””

The tool he uses is God’s word

How does he make you new? Through the word

1 Peter 1:23 “because you have been born again( through the spirt)—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God.”

James 1:18 “By his own choice, he gave us birth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

The spirits personal presence in us means we are brought to enjoy the Spirits own intimate relationship with the Father and the Son

And it is through the word he shares it with us

So that we know the affection so great it outweighs anything else we could run to for life

What do we do with the Holy Spirit?

We breathe because he is the oxygen of the new life we have in Christ

Reeves again says: Having once given life, then He does not move on: He stays to make that life blossom and grow”

Charles Spurgeon said” We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our performance, or our feelings. it is what Jesus IS not what we are that gives rest to our soul”

We have to breathe the oxygen of the Gospel all day everyday to live the Christian life

That is why I said at the beginning: “Christianity is not primarily about lifestyle change; it is about knowing God.

To know and grow to enjoy him is what we are saved for...

Getting to know God better makes for far more profound and practical change as well.

The work of the Spirit is not to make us better performers at being Christians

The Spirit is not about bringing us to a mere external performance for Jesus to love us

His work is about bringing us to actually love Him and find our joy in Him instead of looking anywhere else

It is our desires that drive our behavior

That is how you are made

You are made in the image of the Triune God who has eternally existed in love living out perfectly how to make our desires about Him

God is already putting before us the greatest treasure

That is who He is That is what he is already doing

In love the Father has sent his son the the spirit

Who is Like Our God ?

How radically and overwhelmingly different is the God of the bible?

Not Needy, alone, or selfish not demanding we crawl up to Him

But outgoing, loving, self giving

And he is all of those things to us?

Sinful rebellious treasonous creation that nailed His Son to a tree?

All to send His spirit not to annihilate us like he should

But to breathe new life into dead hearts like mine

And not to make me alive and move on

But he has come to make me feel what i know

But stay for eternity until I am what I was always meant to be

Everything sad will come unture

And it will be the spirit who is the vivifier of the perfection of Jesus that is coming

Lets Pray