Sermon Tone Analysis

The Spirit of Conviction

The Spirit of Conviction

This morning we are continuing our series on the Holy Spirit and we want to take a closer look at what God’s Spirit does in the life of the believer.

Often, we tend to associate the Holy Spirit’s work with the spectacular and the dramatic so much so that we overlook the importance of the Holy Spirit in our day to day activity.

Today, if you are a believer, the Holy Spirit has been given to you and He now dwells within you.

Now if you are not a Christian, I realize that all of this sounds kind of crazy.

In fact, there are a lot of things about Christianity that seem a bit weird but I want you to suspend your judgment until you have a chance to hear a few messages.

The idea of a Spirit living within you probably doesn’t seem that appealing to the modern skeptic but if you are truly looking for answers to your questions about God, your actually looking for an encounter with God’s Spirit in your inner being.

Because just as you have a spirit so does God and in order for you to know God intimately, it is vital for your spirit to be connected to His Spirit.

Let me try to make this a little less mystical.

You can know a great deal of factual knowledge about a person and yet never know that person intimately.

For example, I could tell you almost everything there is to know about my wife: her height, weight, age, social security number, her favorite food but your knowledge of her can’t simply be based on these facts alone because true knowledge of another comes as you spend time in that person’s presence and as you connect at a deeper level.

In 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul describes this very same process in terms of our relationship with God.

1 Corinthians 2:11

Any real knowledge of God comes only as we spend time in the Holy Spirit’s presence and far from being something subjective, a true experience of the Holy Spirit can be measured by our conviction of the fundamental truths of the Gospel that we see in this passage.

For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus Christ, there are three benefits that this passages highlights.

1.

First, you have peace with God.

2. Second, you have access to the grace of God.

3. Third, you are given the hope of the glory of God.

Perhaps, one of the better illustrations that can help us visualize this passage comes from one of the characters out of the movie Forrest Gump by the name of Lieutenant Dan.

If you remember his story, he lost his legs in the Vietnam War and instead of leaving him to die from his wounds, Forrest Gump saves his life against his will.

From that point on, Lieutenant Dan’s life spirals out of control as he deals with his suffering through drugs, alcohol, and women.

Eventually Forrest begins to take him to church.

They start a shrimping business that initially fails miserably until a massive storm miraculously destroys all the other boats but theirs.

Forrest and Lt. Dan become instant millionaires and they start the Bubba Gump Shrimping Company.

One of the enduring scenes from the movie is when Lt. Dan thanks Forrest Gump for saving his life and swims off into the ocean as Tom Hanks narrates, “He never actually said so but I think he made his peace with God.”

The movie is incredibly insightful theologically.

In the face of pain, suffering, and adversity, it is nearly impossible to hope in the glory of God, that one day you will walk with Jesus whole and healed.

You cannot believe that message until you have made your peace with God and you recognize that you now have access to the unending grace of God because of your faith in the redeeming work of Christ.

This sounds so good, in fact it sounds a little too good to believe in, and so many of us don’t believe wholeheartedly.

We remain cautious in our relationship with God but this passage gives us the key by which these truths can be fully believed.

Wholehearted devotion and trust in the message of the gospel comes as we experience the fullness of God’s love for us.

Love Poured Out

At the core of our relationship with God is an experience of God’s love being poured out into our hearts.

We know in theory that God’s love for us is unconditional but this type of love is so foreign, so other worldly, that it needs to be experienced in order to be believed.

It has been said that in order to understand a foreign concept, one of the best ways to learn is to look at a known opposite.

Well the opposite of unconditional love is conditional love or what I call merit based love.

From day one of our lives, we fall into deep patterns of giving and receiving love with conditions.

Whether it is the intention of our parents or not, we feel more loved when we do something well.

For most of us that was probably our grades, level of obedience, and maybe even our physical appearance.

Now, think about the way you chose your friends in your youth.

You probably looked for the popular kids in school, or the ones who made you laugh, or the ones who were nicest to you.

You didn’t look for the downtrodden or the oppressed or the ugliest kid on the playground to be your friend.

You looked for someone who was worthy of your friendship.

As you can probably guess, there is a deep problem with this kind of love.

As much as we need it, it has the capacity to do great harm because conditional love ultimately prohibits the exchange of love in our relationships in two ways:

1.

If a person doesn’t meet your criteria of who is worthy of your love, you won’t give that person your heart.

2. If you feel that you personally don’t feel meet the criteria of a person who is worthy of love, you’ll stop receiving love even when it is given.

In the end, conditional love creates much of the hurt that we experience from our relationships but God reveals a much deeper love on the cross.

Verse 8 summarizes almost perfectly the breadth, width, and depth of Gods love for us.

Paul presents a very rational and tangible way of measuring love in these verses.

Logically, it takes greater love to love someone or something that is completely contrary to your nature and your sense of what is worthy of love.

Typically, we may see this person as an enemy.

I had a very interesting week on my bike this week.

On Tuesday, I was coming home and there is this 3 way stop sign that few bicyclists stop at.

Anyways this middle aged, balding, overweight, executive type in a Mercedes Benz rolls up to me and yells, “You need to stop at the f-ing stop sign, you d-head.”

I became so incensed that I rode after the Mercedes and yelled back and “What gives you the right to talk to me that way!”

If someone were to tell me that I need to love that man, I would have to honestly say, “I will love him when hell freezes over.”

That is a measure of love that I do not have.

(Anyways, I think that guy put some bad mojo on me because on Thursday, I was riding home again and I got into this crazy bike accident.)

When Paul writes that God demonstrated his life while we were still sinners, he is telling us that God chose to love us knowing that we are contrary to his very nature, contrary to everything that He holds to be true, beautiful, and just.

And when two things are so diametrically opposed, the proper reaction is to judge and destroy what threatens you but instead God chose to love.

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, used his prodigious knowledge of math to justify God’s wrath.

In our day and age, it seems so archaic to talk about the wrath of God towards sinners and we assume that people in the past were simply less educated so they chose to believe in this monstrous idea of God.

But Pascal showed that the fundamental laws of math prove that whatever is finite will be swallowed and destroyed, made nothing by that which is infinite.

Our goodness is finite, bound on every side by our sin and when this limited goodness is placed over the infinite and limitless goodness of God, it becomes null and void.

God’s goodness and our goodness is not simply different by degrees, it is something that is qualitatively different.

This is the distance between God and man and its into this chasm that God poured out his love.

This is the full measure of love that exists in this universe and it isn’t a love that is merely sentiment or feelings or words, it is a love that is concrete and real.

The proof and the measure of love is what you are willing to sacrifice for the ones you love.

As a parent, you demonstrate your love for your children by sacrificing your time, your energy, often your own well being.

This is what it means to love.

So if we hold to the truth that God’s love for us has no limits then the ultimate demonstration of that love is to sacrifice the life of his only begotten, eternally perfect Son.

A limitless sacrifice that perfectly represents his limitless love.

God’s desire is to share with us this same love that He has shared with His Son from everlasting to everlasting.

It is this unfathomable love that the Holy Spirit desires to pour into our hearts.

Many men and women have written about their experience of this love and they are all strikingly similar.

Blaise Pascal -

FIRE! GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob

not of the philosophers and of the learned.

Certitude.

Certitude.

Feeling.

Joy.

Peace.

GOD of Jesus Christ.

My God and your God.

Your GOD will be my God.